Yet, Never, in Extremity
by holyllama
Summary: AU, HPxNWN2 Forgotten Realms Crossover. Two adventuresses, at two separate times, fall through the Planes. The ripples are far reaching, indeed.
1. Down the Rabbit Hole

**_Disclaimer:_**_ I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or Neverwinter Nights 2. Those belong to JK Rowling and the geniuses at Wizards of the Coast and Obsidian Entertainment, respectively._

* * *

****

Yet, Never, in Extremity

__

Down the Rabbit Hole

* * *

"_Hope" is the thing with feathers –_

_That perches in the soul –_

_And sings the tune without the words –_

_And never stops – at all –_

__

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

__

I've heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of Me.

__

- Emily Dickinson

* * *

It's the second time this has happened, she thinks as she listens to foreign voices babbling and tries not to squint at the sheer _whiteness_ of the room, and twice is two times too many for her liking. The second time that she's found herself coming out of the black of unconsciousness in an unfamiliar location, unarmed and - for all intents and purposes - so horribly alone. These beings in the room don't count, nor did anything in Okku's barrow before Safiya arrived to free her from the binding circle what seems like a lifetime ago.

She bites her lip almost hard enough to draw blood, hard enough that she hopes the brief burst of pain will overpower the cold spike of utter loneliness and the _need_ for her friends. To see Bevil, her father or Neeshka or Gann or Ammon Jerro or Safiya… Hells, she'd even settle for _Torio_ right now, and it's common knowledge that there's very little love lost between them.

Bits and pieces of a frenzied conversation float to her ears, though it's all gibberish to her. Maybe slightly similar to Common, perhaps a few syllables like Elvish or Chondathan or Dwarvish or even Rashemi, but all of it just so much nonsense. One word, though, is crystalline clear.

_Esmerelle_.

She would know her mother's name anywhere. It's almost second nature to her, deprived of information for so many years, to sit up and take notice.

Sitting up is easier thought than done, apparently. Before she can completely raise her body, before she can even completely shift her arms to carry her weight, she is overcome by a bout of nausea that makes her drop back to the pillows and groan without intention to.

The three humans - at least, she _thinks_ they're human - come scurrying to her bedside.

One, a healer or cleric of some god unfamiliar to her, is fretting over her, muttering the same gibberish but in a tone she's heard so many times before when Retta used to fret over some new injury of Bevil's… She quickly abandons that comparison. Somehow the healer understands that she wants to sit up, and it's with a smile on her slightly chubby face that the healer flicks a small wooden stick and summons the magic that gently props her up while pillows bundle themselves between her and the headboard as a sort of makeshift backrest.

The second is an old man; perhaps as old as Elminster is reputed to be if the silvery beard tucked into his belt is any indication. Koros Ironfist, she thinks as she tries to suppress a giggle at the sight of the old man's virulently yellow robes, would die of sheer beard-envy. Come to think of it, so would most of the male dwarves she knows and - if those rumors were true - Magda as well. The old man watches her as she observes him, twinkling blue eyes lending him an air of amiability. But she has been a fighter since she was old enough to hold sword and bow - almost any of her late townsfolk knew how to at least swing a club or a frying pan at a lizardman - and she can almost see the aura of power and suppressed deadliness surrounding him. No matter how amiable he might seem.

The last is another woman, tall and thin with graying dark hair tied in a bun tight enough to stretch the skin on her forehead and wearing square-ish glasses. Her eyes are dark-colored behind them, but it is the woman's expression that catches her attention. Somewhere between disbelief and hope, and all of it directed at _her_. The woman is quiet for a moment after the healer finishes, all of them are, but then there is another sentence from her lips.

She cannot understand it, but the last three words have a particular emphasis. The last word is, once again, her dead mother's name. She wants to ask them so many things - where is she, who are they, how does the woman who is not the healer know her mother's name, did she know Esmerelle? Common sense stills her tongue. If she cannot understand them, it's very likely that they can't understand her. Far better to wait for someone to summon a translator or even a mage with that particular spell in their books than to waste valuable energy trying to play at pantomimes.

The healer is at her side again, this time rolling a small plank of wood attached to a metal arm over her lap and setting a tray of food on top of it.

She, who can't quite remember when last she ate, dives into her meal with a passion.

* * *

Minerva cannot help but stare. The girl…the _young woman_, probably no more than twenty-one, looks like them in the way that children are supposed to be a blend of their parents. William's nose and wide shoulders and long limbs, but her sister-in-law's coloring and face shape, her ears and height and slim build and raven curls. In a certain light, her hair down and her face tilted _just right_…she could pass for 'Relle's sister.

She can't help but wonder. What's her name, how did she grow up, _where_ did she grow up, how is Esmerelle…so many questions that won't have an answer until the appropriate translation charm is cast.

She does not let herself consider the possibility that she could be wrong about who the young woman is.

It seems to take an eternity, but finally the young woman finishes her meal and looks back up at them with an expression that screams of curiosity. There is no fear in it, though, and Minerva finds that a little unusual for the young woman's situation. Perhaps she knows Minerva somehow? Or could it be that she is confident enough in her abilities that she sees no need for fear? _If_ Minerva's right, _if_ this is her niece, perhaps she was what Esmerelle called an "adventurer"?

Albus needs no prompting to cast the charm, and Minerva notes that the expression on the young woman's face is still more curiosity than fear, though she rubs almost absently at a spot on her chest when Albus casts the spell.

Her mentor is smiling at the young woman, the smile that screams "I am harmless, you can trust me". "How are you feeling, dear girl?"

The young woman looks a little shocked for a second. "I…Well, I feel better than I have any right to, I suppose. Where am I?"

"You're at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. My name is Albus Dumbledore, and these lovely ladies are Minerva McGonagall and Poppy Pomfrey."

The young woman inclines her head politely at each of them. "Like the Academies…Safiya would simply _die_…" Minerva hears her muttering almost under her breath. "I am Elyssia Kendrick."

_Kendrick._ The name is so familiar to her, and Minerva cannot clap her hands to her mouth quickly enough to prevent a shocked and almost joyful gasp from escaping. _This is her niece_.

Albus notices and smiles a little, shooing Poppy out ahead of him with some half-muttered excuses that Minerva knows are about as real as Xenophilius Lovegood's Crumple-Horned Snorkack. That leaves Minerva staring at Elyssia – a variant of Elizabeth or Eliza or Alyssa, perhaps? Esmerelle and William had both loved the names, she recalls - and her niece looking at her with her head tilted in the manner of a curious cat.

"Mistress McGonagall?" she says after a long moment. "I…forgive me for eavesdropping earlier, but…I thought that I heard you speak the name Esmerelle…did you know her?"

Minerva transfigures the little wooden chair by Elyssia's bed into a comfortable armchair and takes a seat. "I did. Very well. How is she?"

Elyssia turns her face away slightly, a hand returning to that spot on her chest. "Esmerelle…my mother…she died when I was very young."

"I'm sorry. She was a good woman."

"Thank you. If you don't mind, Mistress, how did you know her?"

She pulls the long chain of a necklace from her robes and over her head, releasing the catch on an oval-shaped locket and handing it to Elyssia. Her finger taps gently against one side, a Muggle photograph of William and Esmerelle encased in the little frame. "She was my sister-in-law. That's her and your father on their wedding day."

Elyssia's face is decorated with a look of sheer awe, eyes the color of a summer sky sparkling. "My…this is my blood father? And…my mother…"

"Aye. Your father was my younger brother, William. You didn't know?"

"No…Mother never spoke of him to my foster father."

And they talk. Elyssia tells her of West Harbor, of the Farlong brothers and her adventures in Neverwinter and Rashemen and all of her friends, of a shattered and twice-remade sword - "…currently in the Headmaster's keeping, Elyssia, no need to worry…" - and a broken mask. Minerva tells her of William and Esmerelle, of how her younger brother was smitten with the young half-elf enchantress who literally fell into his lap after his last NEWT and of the plucky and brilliant young woman who was equally smitten with him.

By the time Poppy muscles her way back in, they have accepted each other as family (Elyssia comments about the novelty of an aunt) and Elyssia has been told of the fact that she is most likely a witch. The glass that bursts when the young woman speaks of the destruction of West Harbor and the deaths of her friends proves it.

It takes very little to convince Elyssia that she needs to learn to control these powers, less to convince Albus that Elyssia should stay at Hogwarts until they can find a way to return her to Faerûn. It takes a little more work to convince Horace to give up that "experimental" de-aging potion for The Cause, but Minerva is nothing if not resourceful.

And very, very stubborn.

And the first time that Elyssia calls her "Auntie Min", Minerva very nearly weeps for joy.


	2. Boys

_**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or Neverwinter Nights 2. Those belong to JK Rowling and the geniuses at Wizards of the Coast and Obsidian Entertainment, respectively._

* * *

**Yet, Never, in Extremity**

_Boys_

* * *

"_Hope" is the thing with feathers – _

_That perches in the soul – _

_And sings the tune without the words – _

_And never stops – at all – _

_And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – _

_And sore must be the storm – _

_That could abash the little Bird_

_That kept so many warm – _

_I've heard it in the chillest land – _

_And on the strangest Sea – _

_Yet, never, in Extremity,_

_It asked a crumb – of Me._

_- Emily Dickinson_

* * *

Most of the Slytherin girls were often of two minds about several subjects, most notably the subject of boys.

For an example, Lucius Malfoy, who had finished Hogwarts a year ago. There was an unsurprisingly large contingent that envied Narcissa Black her luck in landing the blond as her betrothed – Lucius was handsome, certainly, quite the charmer when he wanted to be. He was also rich and the Lord of the Malfoy line, not to mention umpteen generations of pure blood behind him. The other contingent tended to keep a wide berth around the man. It was Slytherin's worst-kept secret about his future allegiances. It was also worth mentioning that beneath Malfoy's angelic good looks lurked the heart of a pit fiend.

Another example: a certain group of Gryffindor fifth year boys.

Peter Pettigrew was immediately discounted as proper "date" material by each and every Slytherin female who had ever even heard of him. Even if he was a pureblood (and that was debatable), the boy was chubby, mousy, and not exactly the quickest owl in the Owlery. It was also completely beyond Lyssi or any of her year-mates how the boy had even managed to get into Gryffindor, cowardly little sycophant that he was.

Remus Lupin was generally thought of as "cute", and his intelligence was nothing to sniff at, but that was only by the portion of the female population that actually noticed the shy halfblood Gryffindor prefect.

James Potter and Sirius Black tended to be lumped together as one; it was common knowledge that one was almost always to be found where the other was. The general boy-craze tended to split opinions on these two in the way that the opinions split on Malfoy.

Potter and Black were both umpteenth-generation purebloods, Black being the first of his line not to be Sorted into Slytherin. Both were incredibly handsome, Black's rakish good looks and Potter's artfully disheveled I-just-got-off-my-broom appearance sending many of the Slytherin girls swooning over the pair. Both were wealthy, both were heirs to their family lines, both were charming when they wanted to be.

But Black was known to go through girls the way that most boys went through a selection of Honeydukes's Finest. A consummate and (from what she'd heard from sobbing friends) sexually precocious heart-breaker who tried so hard to distance himself from the rest of his family that he'd developed a vehement and virulent bias towards Slytherin House. Girls from Slytherin tended to be short-changed the worst in their "relationships" with him, the gossip mill had noticed early on. It still didn't stop the little fools.

Potter's natural bias – he'd loudly stated at their Sorting that all of his family had been in Gryffindor before him – was exacerbated by his friend's anti-Slytherin ranting, and it was generally noted that the Gryffindor poster child was more than a bit conceited, no matter how handsome or talented he was. Of course, he had his eyes set on one Lily Evans, muggleborn Gryffindor know-it-all and most likely to win Head Girl when they reached their seventh year. The gossip mill tended to find exceeding amusement in the fact that Evans wouldn't even give him the time of day.

There was a very good reason for that, Lyssi thought as she came upon the sight of Evans storming away from the gruesome little tableau in the middle of the crowd. She'd stayed back to ask her aunt a few questions about a bit of Transfigurations text that she hadn't been sure on, so she'd missed the beginning of the altercation, but it wasn't hard to guess what was going on. Especially not with the sight of the boy levitated upside down across from Black and Potter, skinny legs and graying underwear displayed to all of Hogwarts. If she had to guess, Potter and Black had indulged in a post-OWL round of Snape-hunting.

"Who wants to see me take off Snivelly's pants?"

Guess confirmed.

If it had been anyone else at any other point in time, they might have turned and walked in the other direction. Lyssi, however, was not most people.

She hummed a melody under her breath, used it to reach out with her own innate magics, the magics that she still wielded with the ease of long familiarity, and took control of the spell from Potter. There was a bit of a struggle – Potter was certainly talented – but Lyssi had learned to "hear" the shape of the thing years before, figured out how to "hear" it and "see" it and counter it and make it bend to _her_ will with only a few softly-hummed notes. Snape was turned right-side up and floated gently to the ground with a bewildered and cautious look on his face, morphing into a completely flabbergasted expression when Lyssi broke through the crowd to coo over him.

"Just play along," she whispered when she leaned in a little closer, ostensibly to run a hand over his shoulders and cheeks to make sure he was unharmed. Her skill as an actress kept a slight wince suppressed – Snape really _was_ skin and bones – and conjured up her darkest glare to shoot at Black and Potter.

It was nice to see such flabbergasted expressions, especially on Black's face.

"You're absolutely horrible, all of you," she said in her most offended tone of voice. "Why don't you pick on someone else for a change and leave Severus alone?"

"Why are you so interested in him?" Black said. "After all, you could have someone like Potter or me…"

_That_ was a laugh. Or did Black forget so quickly?

She stood when Snape did, bending and turning _just_ right to tempt Black a little with a good view of her profile and her substantial…_charms_. She was beautiful even wearing this purely human illusory mask, she knew it, and she was willing to flaunt it if she felt the need or desire to. To humiliate Black the elder? Well, that was practically a Slytherin's civic duty, wasn't it?

"Someone like you?" she repeated slowly. "Well, after what _Helena_ told us about you…what was it, thirty seconds?"

The circle around them was laughing, especially the girls, and Black looked like he was about to have an apoplectic fit. Even Snape was sniggering, and Lyssi was sure the grin on her face was positively vicious. She hoped it was, at least.

"Really, Black, despite what you may have heard, girls like quality a little more than quantity," she made a show of looking Black over from top to toe and lingering a little just below the belt with a fingernail deliberately tapping her chin. "Though I suppose you're probably lacking in 'quantity' as well. Tormenting innocent Slytherins is your way of compensating, I suppose. Or should I say _over_compensating?"

Black was sputtering now, hardly heard over the raucous roar of laughter from the crowd. Lyssi could make out something about "hardly innocent" and "slimy snakes", but nothing beyond that.

"I prefer _real_ men, Black. Severus, let's go, hm? I wanted to get some…_studying_ done…" She winked at her housemate, her smile growing when the corner of his mouth crooked up a little and Black's sputtering became even more incoherent.

Snape took her hand and bowed over it - there were a few heart-wrenching flashes of two different dark-haired men doing the same before her eyes - before standing and gently tucking it into the crook of his elbow. "As my lady wishes. Excuse me, Potter, Black, but I've got more important things to be…_doing_."

As the pair walked out of the ring, both were hard-pressed to hide their smiles at Black's incoherent yelp.

* * *

"What do you want?"

Lyssi sighed heavily and brushed a loose strand of hair from her forehead. Of course Snape was suspicious, why wouldn't he be?

"Nothing from you, all right, Snape? I just happened on the right situation at the right time for my purposes."

"Hm?"

"You're aware that I'm a friend of Helena Bulstrode, yes?"

Snape winced slightly and nodded. "Fine. About the spectacle earlier…"

"Why, Snape, one would think you were concerned about my reputation."

"You're practically the Queen of Slytherin, McGonagall, your reputation doesn't need help."

"Queen Lyssi…no, perhaps Queen Elyssia…mm, they've not got the right ring to it. It meant nothing, but I'll certainly seek you out when I want to rub Black's _little_ problems in his face, all right?"

"Good enough."


	3. Gift Lions

_**Disclaimer:**__ I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or Neverwinter Nights 2. Those belong to JK Rowling and the geniuses at Wizards of the Coast and Obsidian Entertainment, respectively. The quote is from _Casablanca_, and I don't own that either._

* * *

**Yet, Never, in Extremity**

_Gift Lions_

* * *

"_Hope" is the thing with feathers – _

_That perches in the soul – _

_And sings the tune without the words – _

_And never stops – at all – _

_And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – _

_And sore must be the storm – _

_That could abash the little Bird_

_That kept so many warm – _

_I've heard it in the chillest land – _

_And on the strangest Sea – _

_Yet, never, in Extremity,_

_It asked a crumb – of Me._

_- Emily Dickinson_

* * *

"Evans."

"McGonagall."

Lyssi couldn't help but be slightly wary of the redheaded Gryffindor. They'd never been friends, hardly even passing acquaintances and perhaps academic rivals. So why was Evans lying in wait for her outside of the Great Hall?

Her mouth ran the question out before her mind could come up with the appropriately roundabout phrasing.

Evans's lips twitched up in an expression eerily similar to Snape's smirks. "I heard about what you did yesterday. Black's about ready to hex you on sight, you know, and Severus mentioned it."

"I wasn't aware that you were so familiar with Snape."

"We've known each other for years," Evans said, "even if I'm not fond of his current…_friends_."

Lyssi winced slightly – she knew _exactly_ who Evans was talking about. "They are rather…_distasteful_, aren't they? Especially Mulciber."

Evans nodded in silent agreement, and the both of them fell into an awkward silence.

"Evans, what did you want? You can't have been lying in wait for me just to discuss our opinions on my more repugnant housemates."

"I…I guess I wanted to thank you, all right?" Evans was tugging on the ends of her hair and looking distinctly uneasy. "For cutting Black down a few notches, maybe…certainly for getting them to stop picking on Severus for a little while, even if I'm not speaking to him…"

"I'd heard about that particular comment." Lyssi certainly wouldn't mention that Severus was getting congratulatory back-slaps from the other boys for putting that "upstart Mudblood" in her place. If Narcissa had taught her anything, she'd certainly drilled proper pureblood manners into her head - not that Lyssi had really needed the lessons after those sessions with Nevalle after her induction into the Nine. Had that really been over five years ago?

"Yes, well…look, a bunch of us were going to do a little more revising for our History of Magic OWL, would you like to join us?"

It took a moment for Lyssi to even fully process the question. "I suppose," she drawled out with a slight smile, "that another perspective would be…useful. But we've never been formally introduced, have we?" She extended a hand, smiling at Evans. "Elyssia McGonagall, Slytherin Emasculatrix Extraordinaire. I prefer Lyssi."

Evans grinned brightly and took the offered hand in a firm shake. "Lily Evans, Gryffindor Know-It-All. Just Lily's fine."

And as the girls made their way up to the library, a line from one of the Muggle movies Lyssi had seen in the last Muggle Studies class made its way to the front of her mind.

_Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship._


	4. Incomprehensible

_**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or Neverwinter Nights 2. Those belong to JK Rowling and the geniuses at Wizards of the Coast and Obsidian Entertainment, respectively._

* * *

**Yet, Never, in Extremity**

_Incomprehensible_

* * *

"_Hope" is the thing with feathers – _

_That perches in the soul – _

_And sings the tune without the words – _

_And never stops – at all – _

_And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – _

_And sore must be the storm – _

_That could abash the little Bird_

_That kept so many warm – _

_I've heard it in the chillest land – _

_And on the strangest Sea – _

_Yet, never, in Extremity,_

_It asked a crumb – of Me._

_- Emily Dickinson_

* * *

He didn't understand her at all.

What's in it for her? She was a Slytherin, wasn't she? So why on earth was she working with the Order, tending bar at a dive like the Hog's Head? She could've been adorning some rich Pureblood Death Eater's arm by now.

Sirius Black tugged at his long hair and huffed a little, his gaze never wavering from the younger McGonagall even while the Headmaster was speaking. She met his eyes, quirking one dark brow in silent challenge even as she looked down her nose at him – a trick that she _had_ to have picked up from Narcissa.

Then Dumbledore called on her, stepped aside to let her speak. Where did she find all of her information? It'd always been accurate, but who was her source? His cousin? Merlin knew Narcissa's bastard husband was up high enough in the Death Eaters' organization. And she wasn't her own source - no mark on her arm, no charms to disguise it, either. Dumbledore had said that with the sort of tone that said the subject was over, done with, Avada Kedavra-ed and six feet under.

So who was it?

He'd asked Elyssia that once, after a meeting. Grabbed her elbow and tugged her into one of the alcoves and practically demanded to know who she was getting her information from.

"I work at the Hog's Head," she'd said slowly, almost as though she were speaking to a particularly thick five-year-old. "It's not exactly an exclusive clientele." She followed that with a slight movement of her hands to indicate her face and body – and Sirius would admit that he'd taken a good long look, she was bloody gorgeous, after all – and a quirked eyebrow that seemed to yell, "Put two and two together, you idiot!"

…She'd _definitely_ been hanging around Snape and Cissy-kins for too long.

But he had seen her unspoken point. If what she wore to meetings was the particular cut that she wore while working, one that was tasteful but still displayed her assets quite nicely, paired with her easy and flirtatious charm…she'd have men eating from the palm of her hand, most especially the Death Eaters - some of whom Sirius would put money on never having had a woman once in their pathetic lives.

"And with all due respect, Headmaster," she said now with a particularly withering look in the old man's direction, "may I suggest that the next time you decide to hold an interview in the Hog's Head you do it in one of the private rooms? Someone overheard you two."

The Headmaster seemed momentarily taken aback, but recovered quickly. "Your source?"

"You were lucky."

Albus nodded slightly, and both of them let the matter drop for now.

But now Sirius was curious. Lily was, too, from the look she turned at McGonagall the younger. What James's wife saw in that little snake, he'd never know. But McGonagall the younger shook her head slightly, twitching a hand in some gesture that Lily seemed to know how to interpret.

Sirius was left waiting for Lily and James after the meeting; Dumbledore wanted to talk to them about something, Remus was really feeling the last full moon, and Peter...well, no one really knew half of what got in Peter's head these days. He grabbed the arm of McGonagall the younger again, dragged her into another alcove and put up another silencing charm. "All right, McGonagall," he growled, keeping a firm hold of her upper arms and trying to ignore her glare, "talk. Who's your source?"

Her glare deepened, and Sirius was starting to feel like he was about five centimeters tall. "The day I tell _you_," she said, "is the day that the other eight Hells freeze over and Myrkul's oversized corpse starts singing the Lumberjack Song, drag and all. Excuse me." She crossed her lower arms and batted his hands away, then walked off with the same little mocking wave that she'd flipped over her shoulder that day after the DADA OWL.

His fist met the wall a second later. He couldn't help feeling like he'd been outclassed again, and he hated it.

He _definitely_ didn't understand her.


	5. Mistakes

_**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or Neverwinter Nights 2. Those belong to JK Rowling and the geniuses at Wizards of the Coast and Obsidian Entertainment, respectively._

_**Warning: Alcohol use and implied sexual situation!**_

* * *

**Yet, Never, in Extremity**

_Mistakes_

* * *

"_Hope" is the thing with feathers – _

_That perches in the soul – _

_And sings the tune without the words – _

_And never stops – at all – _

_And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – _

_And sore must be the storm – _

_That could abash the little Bird_

_That kept so many warm – _

_I've heard it in the chillest land – _

_And on the strangest Sea – _

_Yet, never, in Extremity,_

_It asked a crumb – of Me._

_- Emily Dickinson_

* * *

_Her first mistake was letting her Gryffindorish tendencies out to play._

Most of the magical world was celebrating the fall of Voldemort that night; Lyssi and Severus were no exceptions. So it wasn't that surprising when Severus appeared in the Hog's Head with only the faintest trace of a stumble and perhaps a shade of misery touching his dark eyes. Less of a surprise when he bent in close enough to Lyssi that she could smell the faintest traces of Ogden's Finest on his breath.

Escape the festivities, he said in a silky baritone so much like _his _that it sent shivers up her spine, leave the masses to their worship of a lucky infant and remember Lily with him and a bottle of good whiskey – she _could_ hold her whiskey, couldn't she?

She, like the competitive little fool she was, had risen to the taunt and her own burning desire to leave the idiots in their cups.

_Her second mistake was leading a slightly inebriated Severus Snape up to "their" room._

They remembered Lily with each drink, swapped stories and remembrances as old Ogden lit their veins on fire. They were alone in a very familiar upstairs room, the door locked against any other celebrants, and it lent the whole affair a touch of the mysterious, the secret…the forbidden. That it was so touched made it more exciting, their own little rebellion in the faces of the Death Eaters cursing the loss of their Lord and the witches and wizards of the UK praising little Harry Potter.

_Her third mistake was letting herself get as drunk as she did._

Neither of them planned on such a complete loss of their inhibitions, nor such a complete loss of their clothing. But, in their clouded haze of sensation and sound and pure unadulterated _feeling_, neither of them could find it in them to care. Especially not as Severus worshipped her with hands and mouth and body, especially not when she pounced on him like a great cat who'd found its perfect prey. And if they cried out other names at the peak of their passions, neither of them could care, lost as they were in the hazy reality of sensation and sweat and animal attraction.

When she woke to thin slices of sunlight and a screaming headache, she was immediately disconcerted by the feel of a warm body behind her, wrapped around her as though she were a child's favored teddy bear. The smell of sex and liquor lingered in the air, a lock of dark and sweat-greased hair that wasn't her own caught underneath her cheek, and she had almost immediately understood exactly what had happened. She didn't need to remember every detail – her head was pounding too fiercely for her to even attempt to search her memories. She was a Slytherin, she knew how to align the pieces of a puzzle in an appropriate manner.

Though, she thought as she extricated herself from Severus's grasp and slid her pillow into his arms as a poor substitute, what they had most likely done the night before was not entirely _appropriate_ in and of itself.

But the thought of what they'd more than likely done scared her, drove her jangled nerves into screaming panic for reasons she wasn't entirely sure of aside from the heart-wrenchingly obvious. And common sense ran screaming into the dawn.

_Her fourth mistake was letting her panic overtake her._

She fled.

Pure and simple.

She tore through the room, pulling robes on as she hurried to try and erase any signs of her presence before he woke – perhaps he would think it only a dream if she was gone? She hoped she hadn't forgotten anything – and transfiguring them into something that looked more presentable for public view, something that made _her_ look more presentable to public view, and thank all of the goodly gods that had ever lived that she'd never removed the amulet that held her mask to her skin. A quick spell before she opened the door to clean the air, one to arrange the bedclothes around Severus to make it seem as though he were the only one there at all, another to keep him asleep through the whole affair.

She fled the Hog's Head as quickly as she could; only a short nod to a confused-looking Aberforth as her feet carried her away from Hogsmeade, up to the spires and comforting cold stone of Hogwarts. She did not think, tried so hard _not_ to think as her feet carried her through the halls to her aunt's office.

No one there…perhaps the Headmaster's office? He had always been _very_ good about not asking more than what was needed.

The gargoyle stepped aside as she approached – did it know how distraught she was? – and Lyssi was ascending the spiral staircase. It was like some sort of dream, each foot moving ever forward with no conscious consent from her brain. It seemed bare seconds before she was raising a hand to knock at the door that would lead to the Headmaster's office itself.

She was welcomed in as ever, wondered if she looked as off as she felt from the worried looks that her aunt and the Headmaster were shooting at her. She waved off their questions, vaguely hearing the Headmaster's comment that there was someone looking for her. Who would be looking for her?

"Lyssi, lass…" And suddenly she was laughing and sobbing and burying her head in Khelgar's broad shoulders, reaching over and pulling her foster father into her embrace when he looked as though he would come no closer. She didn't know how they'd come to be there, she was only glad that they were.

"Elyssia," Daeghun murmured into her hair, one long-fingered and bow-callused hand patting awkwardly at her shoulder, "we are here to take you home, my daughter. The Keep still waits for its Lady."

She tightened her hold on two of the men who must have done so much to even find her, drawing back after a moment with a brilliant smile that she could feel stretching her cheeks to uncharted proportions. She only vaguely noticed red robes near a shimmering portal, but she'd address that later. And if it _was_ Safiya and not just some hopeful hallucination, Lyssi was going to hug her until the Red Wizard's ribs cracked.

"Let's go home."

_Is it a mistake to leave without facing Severus? She's not sure, but as she steps through the portal, she can't find it in her to care._


	6. Consequences

_**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or Neverwinter Nights 2. Those belong to JK Rowling and the geniuses at Wizards of the Coast and Obsidian Entertainment, respectively._

_**Warning: Implied sexual situation!**_

* * *

**Yet, Never, in Extremity**

_Consequences_

* * *

"_Hope" is the thing with feathers – _

_That perches in the soul – _

_And sings the tune without the words – _

_And never stops – at all – _

_And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – _

_And sore must be the storm – _

_That could abash the little Bird_

_That kept so many warm – _

_I've heard it in the chillest land – _

_And on the strangest Sea – _

_Yet, never, in Extremity,_

_It asked a crumb – of Me._

_- Emily Dickinson_

* * *

When Severus woke up on November first, he immediately groaned and shoved his head under the pillows. Maybe the Firewhiskey last night wasn't such a wonderful idea after all, he thought through his headache. He didn't get drunk often – really, last night was probably only the third time in his entire twenty-one years of existence.

The pounding in his head was a good reminder as to why.

Perhaps, he thought as he reached one arm to flail wildly for his clothing, Elyssia would have a few hangover remedies on hand. She _was_ one of the barkeepers at the Hog's Head, after all – and he was very glad he apparently crawled up to this room to pickle himself. She'd probably had to deal with hundreds of hangover-sufferers.

His hand hit something cloth, and it took a second for his eyes and his brain to agree on what they were seeing when he pulled it to him. It's underwear, yes, but he wasn't in the habit of wearing lacy black knickers. Who in the hell did he have…up…?

Oh _bollocks_.

He'd always had a good memory, and he was cursing it as he wadded up the knickers and hurled them at a wall. He remembered _everything_. Coming in to the Hog's Head late Halloween night after hearing about Lily's death and a couple of pulls of Ogden's Finest Firewhiskey, talking Elyssia into joining him up there by igniting her competitive streak, toasting Lily…

He didn't remember who made the first advances, but that's rather pointless now. He remembered some of the best sex he'd ever had or was ever likely _to_ have, remembered falling asleep not long after they'd…_finished_.

Outside of the knickers, there was no sign that Elyssia was ever there. That, he thought with a loud and frustrated groan as he pulled himself upright, probably meant that she woke up first and legged it.

He was going to buy her flowers, he decided as he pulled on his robes. Roses, lilies, irises, the nicest he could find, and he was going to get Narcissa to help him compose an apologetic note appropriate for the circumstances.

That, of course, would be after Narcissa verbally castrated him for letting himself lose control like that and for scaring her former protégé so. That's not to mention the brutal interrogation he was probably going to get from the woman about the night, did they use protection and what not…

Oh. Oh bloody never-ending _hell_.

He couldn't remember either of them taking any of _those_ precautions. Maybe Elyssia went to brew herself a morning-after potion? He hoped?

Perhaps there was a funeral home with a good deal on headstones somewhere. He was probably going to need one.

* * *

Kana watched the Knight Captain sprint for the nearest grassy corner with no little bemusement. She'd been getting sick at the strangest times lately, and it'd been over a month since she returned from…wherever it was she'd ended up. Almost two, really. Kana was too caught up in the euphoria at the fact that the Knight Captain was actually back to really comprehend Aldanon's explanations of what Startear and Safiya had done. Even _after_ they'd been decoded by the latest magical addition to Crossroad.

Had anyone told her that they'd be playing host to a Red Wizard a few years ago, Kana would have sent that particular idiot on with a broken jaw. Of course, she hadn't expected to stay relatively young through the ten years that the Knight Captain had been missing, either. At least the Red Wizard had simplified her explanation - even then, Kana only caught something about "unpredictable side effects of the ambient magic of the Keep." That had been further boiled down to, "Blame the King of Shadows, that 'Black Garius,' and Jerro." That, Kana understood.

The hagspawn was by the Knight Captain's side in what seemed like an instant, a hand on her back and the other hand gently holding her still-short dark hair out of the way. It was almost sweet, Kana thought, like a new husband hovering over his pregnant wife.

Wait…the sickness…children…could the Knight Captain be…?

She looked over to Bevil, knowing his experience with children and possibly with expecting mothers was greater than hers. He was one of the older children in a large family, after all, and she was an only child. But Bevil was standing dangerously still, mouth gaping as he watched Gannayev and the Knight Captain, and Kana could see his hands clenching into fists.

"He didn't," the sergeant breathed, his ever-expressive face gaining the blackest expression she'd ever seen on the man. "Gods, tell me he didn't get her knocked up…"

"You think…?"

"It's morning sickness, I'm sure of it. The Captain doesn't _get_ sick. Not when we were kids, not now, not _ever_."

Kana started mentally planning the running of the keep again, even as much as she'd sort of liked releasing major decisions back to the Knight Captain. Gods bless her, but the Captain was going to be less than helpful in a few months if Bevil was right.


	7. Rescue Me

_**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or Neverwinter Nights 2. Those belong to JK Rowling and the geniuses at Wizards of the Coast and Obsidian Entertainment, respectively._

* * *

**Yet, Never, in Extremity**

_Rescue Me_

* * *

"_Hope" is the thing with feathers – _

_That perches in the soul – _

_And sings the tune without the words – _

_And never stops – at all – _

_And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – _

_And sore must be the storm – _

_That could abash the little Bird_

_That kept so many warm – _

_I've heard it in the chillest land – _

_And on the strangest Sea – _

_Yet, never, in Extremity,_

_It asked a crumb – of Me._

_- Emily Dickinson_

* * *

Uncle Vernon sounded really angry.

Not that he wasn't angry all the time, four-year-old Harry Potter thought as he curled himself into as small a ball as he could in his cupboard. But Harry had hardly ever heard him sound as angry as he did now.

He scooted a little farther from the door; maybe Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia would throw whoever made Uncle Vernon so mad into the cupboard with Harry. That wouldn't be _so_ bad, would it? He'd have company besides the spiders, at least.

Uncle Vernon was still yelling. He was probably that funny purplish-red color by now. But it sounded like it was moving closer to his door and – if he was really really quiet – he could _almost_ hear someone talking back to him that wasn't Aunt Petunia or any of the grownups that Uncle Vernon usually shouted at.

His stomach growled, and Harry quickly wrapped a thin arm over his stomach to try and make it quiet again. It seemed so horribly loud to him – maybe it got louder the hungrier he was? And he was so _very_ hungry – that he would have been surprised if anyone outside of his cupboard hadn't heard it.

Uncle Vernon was practically roaring now, but then there were two loud noises and Harry couldn't hear his uncle anymore. Sort of a funny loud crunching, like when he put his finger through a piece of the thick Styrofoam that came with the new TV. That, Harry thought glumly as he burrowed his head deeper into his arms, had got him three days straight in the cupboard that time.

He couldn't hear Uncle Vernon still – and that was more than a little weird – but there were footsteps coming towards his cupboard. Someone opened the door with a soft creaking noise from the hinges, and that was how he _knew_ it wasn't Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon, they always ripped the door open and made the hinges squeal.

"Harry?" The voice was…_kind_. He didn't know how someone's voice could be kind, but the lady who'd opened his cupboard had a very kind voice. She looked kind, he thought when he raised his head to look at her, kind and so very pretty. She didn't look like she belonged in a zoo, at least, not like Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon and stupid Dudley.

"Hello, Harry," she said quietly as she ducked inside and crouched down next to him. "My name's Lyssi. I was a friend of your mother's."

"Y-you were?"

"Mm-hm. We went to school together."

There was a shout from Uncle Vernon, then a loud sort of thump. Miss Lyssi stuck her head out of the cupboard and said something in a language Harry didn't think was English before turning around and leaning in towards Harry. "Your uncle," she said softly, "is very stupid, isn't he?"

He had to try _so hard_ to muffle the giggles.

"Harry, I want you to listen to me very closely, all right? I'd guess that you're wondering how I suddenly showed up now? Well, when you were brought here, I had _my_ aunt put a magic spell on you that would tell me if you needed my help. She'd been watching your _relatives_ all day, you see, and she didn't much like the looks of them."

"But…Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia said magic isn't real…"

Miss Lyssi smiled a sad little smile and gently ran a hand through his hair. "Your aunt and uncle are fools, Harry. There's magic _everywhere_, if you just know how to look for it. Your mum and dad were magic, you know. We went to a school just for people with magic."

"_Really_?"

"Really. They didn't want you to stay here if anything happened to them, you know. Their first choice was your godfather, then the Longbottoms – you probably don't remember but you used to play with little Neville all the time, and then me. So I have a very important question to ask you, Harry," she said, backing out of the cupboard and watching him as he followed her. "Would you like to go home with me and my friends?"

Harry poked his head out the open door, and saw the other people that Miss Lyssi must have come with. One was a tall man who had Uncle Vernon pinned to a wall with a dark look that didn't seem to fit his face, along with the threat of the giant spear that the man held as though it were no heavier than a toothpick. The other person…well, if Harry had needed solid proof that magic was real… The other lady was dressed in long red robes that looked like what wizards in storybooks wore, and there were black drawings over her head where most people had hair. She was shorter and not as scary as the man that had Uncle Vernon pinned against the wall, but the amber-eyed glare that she had turned on Aunt Petunia was enough to keep her against a wall and as white as the paint. Harry almost thought he could see the paint peeling around Aunt Petunia.

"Are you a witch?" Harry clapped his hands to his mouth as soon as the last word had left his lips, and he could feel the heat rising in his cheeks.

The woman looked over from the corner of her eyes and smiled a little. "Not quite, little one," she said in lightly accented English. "Lyss, this one would make a good student for me. We'd have to shave his head, of course…"

There was a snort from the man who had Uncle Vernon against the wall, and Miss Lyssi's mouth was twitching like she wanted to smile. "'Fiya, behave."

"Don't I always? Who do you think I am? Gann?"

The man with the spear pointed at Uncle Vernon didn't quite manage to keep his chuckles quiet and said something in that odd language that made Miss 'Fiya give him a really dirty look.

"Can I really go with you, Miss Lyssi?"

"If you really want to, Harry. Are you sure?"

"Oh, yes, please!"

Miss Lyssi's smile was very bright, he thought, and he didn't mind the hand that ruffled his hair even though he pretended to scowl like Dudley always did when Uncle Vernon did that to him. "Go and gather up everything you want to take with you, all right? You won't ever be coming back here, so don't forget anything. I just need to…_talk_…to your aunt and uncle for a minute."

Harry darted forward and hugged Miss Lyssi around the waist before scampering back to his cupboard. He was going to leave the Dursleys' house, something he'd dreamed about for ever and ever.

He wouldn't miss his relatives in the least.

* * *

"Lyss? Are you all right?"

Lyssi sighed heavily and lifted her head, smiling weakly at Gann as he sat down next to her. "I…, how could anyone do that to a child? Much less their own nephew?"

"Harry's aunt and uncle. I should've guessed that was what was bothering you. He was more badly treated than we thought?"

"They practically starved the poor child, locked him in that little cupboard for days on end, made him work his fingers to the bone while they did _nothing_… Cyric's blood!"

Gann didn't say anything, just reached an arm around her back and gently tugged Lyssi to curl up against his side. She sighed again and buried her face in the junction between his neck and shoulder, letting an arm snake around his waist. This…this was one of the reasons she loved him, that he could make her feel better without needing to say anything, that he didn't feel the overwhelming _need_ to offer advice or treat her as though she were made of glass.

"Come, my love," he said softly after a minute. "Come back to bed. There's nothing you can do about those _people _now, and you know the boys are going to run us ragged in the morning. Callum is going to want to poke and prod at his new older brother, and you're going to be keeping our son from prodding the poor child to death."

"Dare I ask why me?"

"Because I will submit myself to Kana's mercy to start sifting through reports for you?"

"I knew there was a reason I loved you."


	8. Family

_**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or Neverwinter Nights 2. Those belong to JK Rowling and the geniuses at Wizards of the Coast and Obsidian Entertainment, respectively._

* * *

**Yet, Never, in Extremity**

_Family_

* * *

"_Hope" is the thing with feathers – _

_That perches in the soul – _

_And sings the tune without the words – _

_And never stops – at all – _

_And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – _

_And sore must be the storm – _

_That could abash the little Bird_

_That kept so many warm – _

_I've heard it in the chillest land – _

_And on the strangest Sea – _

_Yet, never, in Extremity,_

_It asked a crumb – of Me._

_- Emily Dickinson_

* * *

When Harry Potter woke, it was because of the pudgy finger repeatedly poking his cheek.

"Dudley," he whined, burrowing his head further under the pillow, "quit it."

Wait…when did he get a pillow from the _Dursleys_?

There was a giggle from next to his head, and that was about when memory started to click back into place. For one thing, Dudley didn't giggle, at least not like that. And that, he thought when he finally looked at the source of the giggling and the poking, was not Dudley.

The kid was pudgy in that littler-kid way that Harry had never been, probably never would be. The kid's black hair looked a little shaggy, certainly not as wild as Harry's own, and he had dark blue eyes in a pale face that looked remarkably similar to Miss Lyssi's. Maybe this kid was hers?

The kid giggled again. "I not Duddy," he said, and Harry wasn't sure if he was intentionally mispronouncing the name. "I Callum. Mama an' Daddy say you my big brother!"

His… Harry could feel a smile creeping on his face. They wanted him here? Miss Lyssi and Miss 'Fiya and Mr. Gann and Callum _really_ wanted him here? Enough for Callum to call him a brother?

"I this many." There were two pudgy fingers held up…two years old, a whole two years younger than Harry.

Harry held up four fingers, still giddy with the hope that he might be a big brother now. He'd always wondered what it'd be like, to have someone who liked him, to have a little brother he could look after and stand up for like some of the older kids stood up for their little brothers and sisters Harry's age.

"Ooh, big big _big _brother! Go find Mama and Daddy, then we go Keep, okay?"

* * *

"They seem to be getting along."

Lyssi tilted her head back to smile at her foster father, turning back to watch the boys as Daeghun sat down beside her. "I'd hoped they would. I think I wanted to make sure before sending the adoption papers back with Auntie Min."

Daeghun made a noncommittal humming sound, something so easily familiar that Lyssi couldn't help smiling at it. How many times in West Harbor had they sat in front of the fireplace like this, her foster father watching the flames while Lyssi absorbed herself with something else?

"From what I've heard from your husband, Harry is a very lucky boy. You will be a good mother to him, Elyssia."

"I'm not Harry's mother. Lily was."

"But that is what you are now, in the same way that I was a father to you. Though I am sure that you were much easier to raise than two boys."

Lyssi wasn't going to comment on Daeghun's child-rearing methods, not even if the elf had loosened up _considerably_ in the decade she'd been gone. "Bevil's already wished me luck. According to him, I'll need it."

"Perhaps. When is your aunt arriving?"

"Tomorrow, about midday."

"And have you decided on a name for the…papers?"

"Harrison." When Daeghun lifted an eyebrow at her, Lyssi shrugged slightly. "Lily wanted to name him Harrison, with Harry as a nickname. Potter thought it was too long for a little boy, so they decided to just use Harry. 'Harrison Kendrick' sounds better than 'Harry Kendrick', though, wouldn't you agree?"

"Perhaps."

"I'll take that as a yes, Father. Oh…excuse me. Harry! Callum! Callum Kendrick, put that down _now_!"


	9. Holidays

_**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or Neverwinter Nights 2. Those belong to JK Rowling and the geniuses at Wizards of the Coast and Obsidian Entertainment, respectively._

* * *

**Yet, Never, in Extremity**

_Holidays_

* * *

"_Hope" is the thing with feathers – _

_That perches in the soul – _

_And sings the tune without the words – _

_And never stops – at all – _

_And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – _

_And sore must be the storm – _

_That could abash the little Bird_

_That kept so many warm – _

_I've heard it in the chillest land – _

_And on the strangest Sea – _

_Yet, never, in Extremity,_

_It asked a crumb – of Me._

_- Emily Dickinson_

* * *

Harry had found, in the past two years, that Faerûn was very different from Privet Drive, not least of all the new languages that he'd had to learn.

He had a real family there, even if they weren't really related to him. He had Mama Lyssi and Papa Gann, Callum, Grampa Daeghun, Auntie Min, and lots and lots more _nice_ aunts and uncles and cousins who are always glad to see him. He especially liked Auntie Neeshka and "Cousin" Wolf because they were fun and they were teaching him and Callum how to sneak around and pick locks and fun stuff like that. He also really liked Ivarr the Blessed, the cleric at the Temple of Tyr. Harry was going to start studying with him when he turned seven. Callum thought those lessons were going to be boring, but Harry was sure they wouldn't be.

That was another thing that was different. Privet Drive _was_ boring, nothing but chores and the cupboard and his old family and houses that looked exactly the same. Crossroad Keep was a real actual castle, with a garrison of real live soldiers; Mama Lyssi was a real knight, one that was really _really _important in Neverwinter. Maybe there wasn't any electricity and maybe it was kind of like stepping into a fairytale, but that just made it even cooler to Harry.

He didn't even mind the chores he had now, even when he and Callum had to go help Mr. Orlen in the fields at harvest time. It was just fetching tools and carrying water, after all, and everybody pitched in to get the work done, even Mr. Orlen even though he was really old. It was like a big fair, everyone laughing and working and good-natured.

Holidays were different there, too. Uncle Vernon always took Saturdays and Sundays off from Grunnings, but everyone at the Keep worked every day but five or six in the year. There was Midwinter, Greengrass, Midsummer, Highharvestide, and Harry thought next year was supposed to be Shieldmeet. Or was it the year after that?

But Harry's favorite holiday wasn't any of those, though Mama Lyssi and Miss Kana always put on a really good festival with the nearby village for those. No, Harry's favorite was the Feast of the Moon. It was a day to remember the dead, and Mama Lyssi always told him and Callum so many stories. Stories about Harry's real parents, about the man Callum was named for, about her friends and all of the people she knew in West Harbor and at Hogwarts and in Neverwinter and Rashemen. Sometimes they could talk Papa Gann into telling a few stories, but even Papa Gann agreed that all three of the "boys" liked Mama Lyssi's stories best. They're told in such a way that it seemed like he was right there, and she knew how to use her magic and even the little changes in her voice and her face to make them even better.

So when she came in that night, that time of year, to put he and Callum to bed, he had a very important question.

"Mama Lyssi? Would you please tell us the story about when my mum and dad fought the evil wizard?"

Mama Lyssi smiled and sat down on the foot of Callum's bed, and Harry could see Papa Gann lurking in the doorway with a small smile on his face. "Of course, sweetling. Now, just after your parents and I had left Hogwarts, the evil wizard Voldemort was getting even stronger than he already was…"


	10. Decisions

_**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or Neverwinter Nights 2. Those belong to JK Rowling and the geniuses at Wizards of the Coast and Obsidian Entertainment, respectively._

* * *

**Yet, Never, in Extremity**

_Decisions_

* * *

"_Hope" is the thing with feathers – _

_That perches in the soul – _

_And sings the tune without the words – _

_And never stops – at all – _

_And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – _

_And sore must be the storm – _

_That could abash the little Bird_

_That kept so many warm – _

_I've heard it in the chillest land – _

_And on the strangest Sea – _

_Yet, never, in Extremity,_

_It asked a crumb – of Me._

_- Emily Dickinson_

* * *

"Be careful, boys." Gann couldn't help a small smile when Callum grinned up at him, Bevil's son hot on his heels. Odd, he couldn't help thinking, how history tended to repeat itself at times.

"Sorry, Dad, we're just going to go meet Harry. Auntie Min wants to talk to him and Mother, probably you, too."

"Why don't you and Danan go find your grandfather and Safiya? I'll meet your brother."

"Yes, sir. Mother and Auntie are in our kitchen."

The boys ran back towards the Keep proper, and Gann chuckled a little before making his way through the busy courtyard.

Had it really been that long? Almost seven years since they'd brought Harry to Faerûn; the kind and gentle boy that he and Lyssi considered as good as their son, the boy Callum called brother and Danan Starling idolized. The boy that would be returning to _that_ plane to study a form of near-sorcerous magic that had even Safiya scratching her lovely tattooed head. Harry wasn't his by blood, but this was a boy he'd helped raise, and, if he was right, who would soon be spending most of the next seven years on the plane that had almost stolen Elyssia from them. Though, he thought with a small flash of residual anger, that was mostly the fault of that thrice-damned sword in the first place. And Kelemvor. He wasn't sure how, but given enough time he could probably trace that back to the current God of the Dead somehow.

And Callum, if Elyssia and Minerva were right, might be joining Harry in two years. Lyssi had told him about that night before Khelgar, Daeghun, and Safiya had brought her home, and he held no ill will towards his wife for it. He knew full well her competitive streak, after all - he'd used it to win a kiss when he'd first started courting her - and he doubted that her tolerance for alcohol had increased in her time away from them. It didn't mean that he wouldn't be severely tempted to lay hands around Severus Snape's neck if he ever met the man, though, even if Elyssia herself wasn't sure which of them was Callum's father.

Harry was just bidding Ivarr farewell when Gann reached the Temple of Tyr. "How were your lessons?"

"They went well," Harry said. "Ivarr's teaching me how to cure minor wounds and a few basic antidotes. I should have it soon. I hope."

"I'm sure you'll do well; Ivarr's had nothing but good words for your progress. Minerva's here."

"How long is she here for? Have she and Grampa Daeghun gotten into any fights yet?"

Gann laughed. "Not yet. But she wants to talk to you and your mother, and I made sure your brother fetched your grandfather and Safiya for this."

Harry _cringed_. Not, Gann thought with an amused snicker, that he didn't have reason to. "Please, Father, _please_ tell me we'll be away from any weaponry? After last time…"

"I'm afraid the family meeting will be in the kitchen. Now don't look at me like that, it was your mother's idea. How are your eyes feeling?"

"Fine, since the last time Ivarr looked at them. He said he did as much as he could with the scar on my forehead, too." Harry reached out absently, tugging at the thick fringe that hid the last vestiges of a faint scar shaped like a lightning bolt and smoothing the dark hair more firmly over his forehead.

They'd told him when Harry was nine. About what the scar meant, about Harry's birth parents' death, about Voldemort's campaign of terror - and that was a pathetically _stupid_ name, wasn't it? To think that Elyssia had been in the thick of that… But they'd made sure that Harry knew what everything meant, that he'd be a celebrity for something he couldn't remember if the scar was displayed. It didn't sit well with Elyssia, it didn't sit well with him, it didn't sit well with Harry or Elyssia's aunt. Thank the spirits for the last.

Her aunt… Gann mentally shook himself, put a hand on his eldest boy's shoulder. "Come on, let's go see what the old dragon wants."

* * *

It was an odd sight to see the entire Faerûnian contingent of her pseudo-family arrayed opposite her, Minerva thought as she watched Daeghun Farlong and Safiya take their seats. Elyssia and Gann directly across from her, each with an arm or a hand on young Harry and Callum watching her suspiciously from just behind his mother's shoulder - the boy looked eerily like his father with that particular look on his face. Daeghun and Safiya had taken a seat on either side of the small family, glaring for all they were worth.

Minerva fixed both of them, wood elf and Thayan, with her sternest glare and slid a parchment envelope across the table to Harry. "Your Hogwarts letter."

Harry nodded slightly and brought it back to him, flipping a small dagger from his belt to slice the envelope open. He removed the letter, read it, passed it and the supply list over to his foster mother. Daeghun was reading over Elyssia's shoulder, she noticed.

"We can go shopping today or tomorrow, if you'd like," she said, folding her hands on the table and watching the little family. "While I'm sure that many of the Potions ingredients would be much better for your classes were they picked here, I cannot say the same for the rest of your supplies, Harry."

"He hasn't agreed to go," Daeghun said, still imposing despite the fact that he was shorter than _she_ was.

Minerva caught the little ones looking at each other, looking between each of them, and starting to inch towards the door. After the royal altercation the last time she visited, she didn't blame them.

"Down, boys," Gann said, and Minerva could hear the laughter in his voice. "Your grandfather and your great-aunt aren't going to start anything this time, _are_ they?"

Daeghun rolled his eyes and went back to reading over Elyssia's shoulder, plucking the letter from her hands when she'd finished.

"Your grandfather has a point, Harry," Elyssia said. "It's your decision. Would you like to go to Hogwarts?"

"I've been hearing about it for almost forever, Mother," Harry said. "Of course I want to go!"

"You understand everything that the decision means?" Safiya said. "If you go to Hogwarts, you won't be able to keep up the practical lessons with Ivarr until you come home for your holidays. You won't be able to see us outside of your long breaks and summers, you won't be able to come home except for those times. The only contact you'd have with any of us is through letters. Do you understand all of that?"

Harry bit down on his lip and looked at the tabletop for a moment. "Auntie? Will I still be Harrison Kendrick there? When you call for the Sorting and in my classes? I…I _like_ being Harry Kendrick, and I haven't been Harry Potter in so long…"

Minerva couldn't help the soft smile on her face. "Of course you will. I'll make sure of it, even if I have to transfigure the lists myself."

"Do not feel that you have to go out of some sense of obligation," Daeghun interjected. "No matter what they say, you do not owe them anything."

"Now see here, Mr. Farlong -"

"Father!"

"He is right, though." Gann reached around Elyssia and turned Harry's face towards his own. "Think long and hard about this, Harry. If you want to go, let it be because _you_ want to go. Understood?"

"Yes, sir…Mother, Father, may I be excused for a while?"

"Come find us when you're ready, sweetling. Callum, if you want to go, too?"

"Yes, Mother. C'mon, Harry, let's go find Danan."

The boys walked out of the room, and Elyssia turned her gaze to her and the elf. "Father, Auntie, I appreciate that you're trying to help in your own ways. But this will be Harry's decision. I want it made without any outside interference other than any advice that he might ask for. And, for the sake of every god and his _mother_ - don't you _dare_ snicker, Gannayev - can you two _please_ stop acting like a pair of three-year olds?!"

* * *

"Come in."

"Mother? Father? I, um, I was wondering…could we get Auntie Min to take us shopping tomorrow? For my school things?"

"Of course, sweetling. Why don't you go ask her right now, hm?"

"Thank you!"


	11. Shopping

_**Disclaimer:**__ I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or Neverwinter Nights 2. Those belong to JK Rowling and the geniuses at Wizards of the Coast and Obsidian Entertainment, respectively. Anything that looks or sounds like it came out of _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone _pretty much did, mostly the scene with Ollivander, some of the descriptions of Diagon Alley, and Draco Malfoy's opening salvo. Again, I don't own, please don't sue._

* * *

**Yet, Never, in Extremity**

_Shopping_

* * *

"_Hope" is the thing with feathers – _

_That perches in the soul – _

_And sings the tune without the words – _

_And never stops – at all – _

_And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – _

_And sore must be the storm – _

_That could abash the little Bird_

_That kept so many warm – _

_I've heard it in the chillest land – _

_And on the strangest Sea – _

_Yet, never, in Extremity,_

_It asked a crumb – of Me._

_- Emily Dickinson_

* * *

The little surprised sounds were audible behind Lyssi as she slipped her wand back into its holster and shared a smirk with her aunt. Callum and Harry were acting like the children they were. Her husband and her friend, well, it was nice to see them acting a little childish.

They'd not quite had the same reaction to Aldanon's improvised Floo connection to the Leaky Cauldron - teleportation and portals were old news to anyone who spent time around a powerful wizard, after all, even more so to anyone who'd ever spent time with Zhjaeve and Ammon Jerro.

Of course, that could have also had something to do with Floo travel itself.

"Welcome," Lyssi said with a little theatrical bow, "to Diagon Alley."

The boys scampered ahead a little as the small group walked through the archway, and it looked like they didn't know where to look first. From the slight sound just behind her, she'd guess that Gann or Neeshka had just seen the archway collapse back into solid bricks.

"Stay close, boys," Auntie Min called out, the boys chirping back an affirmative.

There were so many memories. In Harry and Callum's faces she could see herself at her second time through eleven, practically dizzy for looking every which way. There was the cauldron shop, piles of their wares gleaming in the sun. There was the apothecary across from it, strange smells wafting from the doorway and not-really-so-disgruntled customers muttering imprecations about the rising price of dragon liver.

"We'll go to Gringotts first," Lyssi said, mentally shaking off the bout of nostalgia and absently fingering the cord around her neck. "We can get our currency changed over, and we should see if your parents left you your own vault, Harry."

"I've got his key," Auntie Min said. "It might be wise to start a vault for Callum as well. Just in case."

"Yes…just in case…"

The short walk was spent pointing out various shops along the way until they reached pristine white marble stairs. The bank towered over the other shops, bronze doors glinting cheerily in the morning sun. "Neeshka, hands in your pockets. Gann? Don't antagonize the goblins, please, they run the bank."

Their faces were priceless.

* * *

It was only Harry, his mother, and his brother who walked into Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions. Auntie Neeshka had tottered back to the Leaky Cauldron after the wild ride on the Gringotts carts - something to settle her stomach, she'd said. Harry's father had gone with her to make sure it wasn't anything horribly strong. He'd looked only slightly better off than Auntie Neeshka, though, and Harry figured he'd be getting something to settle his stomach as well. Auntie Min had said she'd needed to run some errand for the Headmaster, promising to meet the rest of them in Flourish and Blott's once they were through.

They were greeted by a squat, smiling witch dressed in mauve, presumably Madam Malkin. "Hogwarts, dear?" she said before Harry's mother could even speak. "I've got the lot here - there's another young man being fitted up just now, in fact."

Harry's mother nodded slightly, gently prodding Harry to follow the witch to the back of the store where a boy with a pale, pointed face was standing on a footstool as another witch pinned up his robes. When Harry looked back at her, after Madam Malkin had maneuvered him onto the second footstool and slipped a long robe over his head, he noticed that she was browsing through the racks in her size and Callum's, sending multiple curious glances back at the boy next to Harry. It was like that look she got when something was on the tip of her tongue, Harry thought.

"Hello," the other boy said, "Hogwarts, too?"

"Yes," Harry said.

"My father's next door buying my books and mother's up the street looking at wands," the boy said. Harry thought he sounded quite bored with the whole thing - he hoped he never sounded like that. "Then I'm going to drag them off to look at racing brooms. I don't see why first years can't have their own. I think I'll bully father into getting me one and I'll smuggle it in somehow. Have _you_ got your own broom?"

"No," Harry said. "Mother's said she's not very good on one, and she'd rather wait until my brother and I get to Hogwarts before we started tearing around on brooms."

"Couldn't your father teach you?"

"No. I'm too busy with lessons and things like that, anyhow."

"Too bad. Know what house you'll be in yet?"

Harry shrugged slightly. He had the feeling that he'd be in either Ravenclaw or perhaps Hufflepuff from what his mother had told him of the houses, but it wouldn't be bad at all to be in Slytherin, like Mother had been.

"Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they, but I know I'll be in Slytherin, all our family have been - imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?"

Harry had to suppress a smile at the miniature tirade, just for the thought of what Auntie Neeshka or Safiya would say at the sheer snobbishness of the statement - probably something particularly cutting. "Mother was a Slytherin, I think."

"That's her over there, then, is it?" the boy said, nodding at where Harry's mother stood holding Callum-sized robes in different colors against his brother's front. Most of those were some shade of blue or green. Callum was turning a nice shade of red.

"And my little brother, Callum. Sorry, I never introduced myself, did I? My name's Harry Kendrick."

"Draco Malfoy."

"I _thought_ you looked familiar!" Harry started a little when he heard his mother so close, watched her scrutinize Draco. "You're Lucius and Narcissa's son, aren't you? Your mother was a sort of a mentor to me during my first few years at Hogwarts."

"That's you done, my dear," Madam Malkin said to Harry, who hopped down from the footstool, a little sorry to have to stop talking with Draco.

"We'd best be going on, Harry," his mother said, "Auntie will be waiting - and so should your father and Neeshka, if they know what's good for them. Mr. Malfoy, please tell your mother that Elyssia McGonagall sends her regards."

Draco nodded, looking a bit dumbfounded. "Well," he said, "I'll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose, Harry."

"You too, Draco. It was nice to meet you."

* * *

"Well, it looks like we've only two things left, Harry. Your wand, and your familiar."

"He won't need a familiar," Neeshka said. "From what I heard from Bevil, one of Squeak's latest litter practically adopted him."

"Allow me to amend that, then," Elyssia said with a good-natured eye roll, "Harry's wand and a few necessities for the cat."

Ollivanders was the sort of place that instinctively made the hairs on the back of Gann's neck stand on end. It was tiny, narrow and shabby with peeling gold letters over the door that proclaimed that the store had been fashioning "Fine Wands since 382 B.C." and only a single wand on an old purple cushion in the window display. "Fine wands", pfeh. He was sorely tempted to bring Safiya to this place, just to see the normally controlled Red Wizard's reaction - he'd put his mother's eye on some form of spectacular explosion from the event if he ever got the chance.

It wasn't the appearance of the place that had Gann on edge, though - it looked like the tiefling was just as on edge as he was, and even the boys were silent and scanning the stacks of boxes as they stepped inside and waited. No, it was the close-distant tingle in the dust and air and too-thick silence that reeked of magic and reminded him of a petty and vengeful god's curse, one that had plagued his homeland for too many years and had almost destroyed the woman he loved.

"Your fingers are twitching, love." Elyssia was grinning at him, a conspiratorial smile that made him wonder just what _exactly_ she knew this time that he didn't.

"Good afternoon," a soft voice said. Everyone but Elyssia and her aunt jumped, and Gann's dagger was in his hand before he consciously realized it.

The old man in front of them didn't _seem_ like a threat, spindly and pale with equally pale too-wide eyes shining in the gloom of the shop. He was a wizard, though, Gann reminded himself as he slid the dagger back into its hidden sheath, and Gann could think of countless stories of mages who had easily defeated a physically stronger foe by playing on said foe's impressions of the mage.

"Hello," Harry said awkwardly, and it seemed that the strange man - was this Ollivander? - had eyes only for his eldest at the moment.

"Ah yes," the man said. "Yes, yes. I thought I'd be seeing you soon. Harry Potter." It wasn't a question.

"It's Harry Kendrick now," Harry managed to interject, his hand inching towards the dagger Gann knew the boy kept hidden in his belt.

Ollivander seemed not to have heard him. "You have your mother's eyes. It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her first wand. Ten and a quarter inches long, swishy, made of willow. Nice wand for charm work."

Ollivander moved a bit closer to Harry, and Elyssia set a hand on Gann's arm before he could put himself between the two like all of his instincts were screaming for him to do, paternal and the ones born of years in the wild. Was the man undead or something close, Gann wondered; those silvery eyes hadn't blinked once, and he'd been keeping a close watch on the man.

"Gann, _it's all right_," Elyssia whispered in Rashemi. "He's _safe_."

"Your father, on the other hand," Ollivander had continued on, "favored a mahogany wand. Eleven inches. Pliable. A little more power and excellent for transfiguration. Well, I say your father favored it - it's really the wand that chooses the wizard, of course."

Ollivander had come so close that he and Harry were almost nose to nose, Harry's hand frozen loose around the hilt of the not-so-hidden dagger and Ollivander's eyes focused on a certain point of Harry's forehead. "And that's where…"

One long, white finger brushed over a bit of Harry's hair that Gann knew to cover a certain fragmented scar, little more than broken white lines the length of Kaji's pinkie fingernail now. It still disturbed Gann, and likely his son, at the idea that the old man had pinpointed _exactly_ where the scar was.

"I'm sorry to say I sold the wand that did it," he said softly. "Thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. Powerful wand, very powerful, and in the wrong hands…well, if I'd known what that wand was going out in the world to do…"

He shook his head again and stepped back a little, eyes focusing on Elyssia and her aunt.

"Minerva, always a pleasure to see you. And Lady Kendrick! Such an honor to see you again…Birch, ten inches, rather resilient, wasn't it?"

"It is, sir," Elyssia said, one hand tapping lightly against the slim leather holster at her waist.

"Good wand, that one. Well now - Mr. Kendrick. Let me see." Ollivander had turned back to Harry, pulling a long tape measure with silver markings from his pocket. "Which is your wand arm?"

"My… Oh, my right arm, sir."

"Hold out your arm. That's it." He measured Harry from shoulder to finger, then wrist to elbow, shoulder to floor, knee to armpit, and around his head. "Every Ollivander wand has a core of a powerful magical substance. We use unicorn hairs, phoenix tail feathers, and the heartstrings of dragons."

Gann didn't want to contemplate exactly _how_ one went about collecting the heartstrings of dragons. Or how the tape measure kept bouncing around and randomly measuring Harry while the old man had started flitting among the stacks of boxes.

"No two Ollivander wands are the same, just as no two unicorns, dragons, or phoenixes are quite the same. And, of course, you will never get such good results with another wizard's wand."

Harry blinked and sneezed, waving the animated tape measure away from its position directly under his nostrils.

"That will do," Ollivander said, and the tape measure crumpled in a small heap on the floor. Callum, most likely looking for something to do and somewhere to look besides at the eerie little merchant, scooped it up and promptly began winding it into a coil around his hands. "Right then, Mr. Kendrick. Try this one. Beechwood and dragon heartstring. Nine inches. Nice and flexible. Just take it and give it a wave."

Harry took the wand from Ollivander and waved it around a bit, all the while looking thoroughly mortified, but Ollivander snatched it back almost at once.

"Maple and phoenix feather. Seven inches. Quite whippy. Try -"

Harry tried again, but, as before, he'd hardly raised the wand when it, too, was confiscated by Ollivander.

"No, no - here, ebony and unicorn hair, eight and a half inches, springy. Go on, go on, try it out."

Harry tried. One wand after the other for what seemed like a good two hours. Neeshka was looking twitchy, Callum was poking at the reanimated tape measure, and the pile of discarded wands was rising higher and higher. But, oddly, the more wands that Ollivander pulled from the shelves, the happier he seemed to be.

"Tricky customer, eh? Not to worry, we'll find the perfect match here somewhere - I wonder, now - yes, why not - unusual combination - holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches, nice and supple."

Gann knew that this wand was the right one before he'd seen the stream of red and gold sparks from the end, just by watching the expression on Harry's face when he'd taken the wand.

Callum and Neeshka whooped and clapped - no doubt excited to just get _out_ of there - while Elyssia and Minerva shared smug smiles. Gann was fairly sure that he was close to beaming as well.

"Oh, bravo!" Ollivander cried. "Yes, indeed, oh, very good. Well, well, well…how curious…how very curious…"

He put the wand back into its box and wrapped it in brown paper, still muttering about how curious _something_ was. "What, exactly, is 'curious'?" Gann finally said, stepping forward a little and setting a hand on each of his boys' shoulders.

"I remember every wand I've sold, Sir Gannayev. Every single wand. It so happens that the phoenix whose tail feather is in your ward's wand, gave another feather - just one other. It is very curious indeed that he should be destined for this wand when its brother - why, its brother gave you that scar, young Master Kendrick."

Gann could feel Harry tense, accompanied by a shocked little gasp from Minerva.

"Yes, thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. Curious indeed how these things happen. The wand chooses the wizard, remember…I think we must expect great things from you, Mr. Kendrick…After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things - terrible, yes, but great."

Gann tossed the seven gold Galleons down on the counter and herded his family from the shop, glaring at Ollivander for all he was worth even as the man bowed them out.

* * *

"So this's where you've been hidin'."

Harry's head jerked up at the sound of the older boy's voice, eyes moving from the wand he'd been worrying between his hands to Wolf. It almost didn't surprise him that Wolf been the one to find him; if anyone knew the ins and outs of the keep better than his mother and Callum and Harry himself, then it was Auntie Neeshka and Wolf. And Auntie Neeshka would've told Wolf how disconcerted Harry had been when they'd left Ollivander's.

Wolf plopped down next to him, scrubbing his knuckles into Harry's hair and messing up the neat braid it had been in. "What's wrong, Shorty?"

"How does Mother do it?" Harry said before he could think. "She's so famous and people expect so much from her because she's so talented…Father, too…"

"I get the feeling this isn't about the Captain being famous as much as it is _Harry_ being famous, right? I know I'm right, Shorty, so don't say I'm not." Wolf contorted in some manner that Harry could only vaguely imagine being comfortable for the older boy, pale blue eyes regarding Harry with a seriousness that Harry only ever saw when it concerned "his crew".

"I eavesdropped on the Captain, I'll admit it, just not to her or your da and you'd best not either. One thing you've got to remember is that your being famous to the wizards isn't like the Captain's famous here. The Captain knows _why_ she's famous, she knows _what_ she did and remembers just about everything. _You_, on the other hand -"

"-Don't. Yeah, I got that."

"Right in one. How's the Captain keep it from getting to her? She's got friends, she's got family, she's got stuff and people to keep her grounded and, the Number One thing - you ready?"

"Just tell me already, you great berk." Harry was smiling, even if just a little. Wolf had a way of cheering people up, even if said people usually ended up wanting to belt him afterwards.

"The Number One way to keep yourself sane when the world about you is losing their heads: you gotta _know_ who you are."

"Huh?"

"You know, that 'know thyself' crap the githzerai used to spout off. If you know who you are and stay true to who you are, then no one can take that from you. They can't make you what _they_ want you to be if _you_ know what you want you to be."

"…That…didn't make sense at all…"

Wolf grinned and darted forward, catching Harry in a headlock and scrubbing his knuckles through Harry's hair again. "Yes it did, Shorty, you just don't know it yet. C'mon, the Captain's looking for you for dinner, and I want to sneak some of that stew."


	12. A Thinking Cap

_**Disclaimer:**__ I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or Neverwinter Nights 2. Those belong to JK Rowling and the geniuses at Wizards of the Coast and Obsidian Entertainment, respectively. If anything looks like it was taken from _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone_, it probably was - mainly dialogue and descriptions. Again, I don't own, so please don't sue._

* * *

**Yet, Never, in Extremity**

_A Thinking Cap_

* * *

"_Hope" is the thing with feathers – _

_That perches in the soul – _

_And sings the tune without the words – _

_And never stops – at all – _

_And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – _

_And sore must be the storm – _

_That could abash the little Bird_

_That kept so many warm – _

_I've heard it in the chillest land – _

_And on the strangest Sea – _

_Yet, never, in Extremity,_

_It asked a crumb – of Me._

_- Emily Dickinson_

* * *

Harry fidgeted a little under Auntie Min's stern gaze, thoroughly reminded with a single _look_ that she wasn't someone that a student would want to cross. Really, she wasn't someone that anyone but Grampa Daeghun would want to cross, and Harry had doubts about his adoptive grandfather's sanity at times.

The train ride from Platform 9-and-¾ had gone well enough. Long, certainly, but he'd passed the time looking over the first few scrolls that Ivarr had given him for the year and chatting with a round-faced boy who had introduced himself as Neville Longbottom and with Draco, when the other had stopped in to say hello and introduce Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle. Neville had almost died of fright and immediately started questioning Harry's sanity the second that Draco had left their compartment.

"His mother and mine are friends from when they were at Hogwarts," Harry had said with a shrug. "I may as well be at least polite for no other reason than that. Besides, we're _eleven_ - I don't think he _could_ be evil. Maybe really spoiled, but…"

Neville was standing next to him now, looking as nervous as Harry felt, his cloak inadvertently fastened under his left ear.

"The four houses," Auntie Min was saying, "are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each house has its own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your house points, while any rule-breaking will lose house points. At the end of the year, the house with the most points is awarded the house cup, a great honor. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever house becomes yours.

"The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting."

Harry followed her eyes, landing on Neville's cloak and a tall redheaded boy's smudged nose. He tucked a loose strand of hair back behind an ear, flattening his bangs even more firmly against his forehead and thanking every god he could think of that he'd grown it out as long as it was. It had been nothing less than a disaster when it was short.

"I shall return when we are ready for you," Auntie said. "Please wait quietly."

She left the chamber. Harry reached out and helped Neville adjust his cloak, not really focusing on anything besides his racing thoughts.

How were they going to be Sorted? Mother didn't tell him or Callum, though she assured them it wasn't anything as horrible as having to wrestle a troll or anything like that. Would he even _be_ Sorted? Or would they take one look at him and tell him to go home?

No one was talking, he noticed, except for a bushy-haired brunette whispering rapidly about all the spells she'd learned and which one she'd need. Neville could apparently hear her as well as Harry could, because his new acquaintance whimpered slightly. Harry patted him on the shoulder sympathetically.

Then several people behind them screamed.

He, and several of the people around him, gasped. His hands, though, twisted in a warding sign Ivarr had taught him. Ghosts, about twenty of them, had just streamed through the wall. They were a pearly and almost-translucent white, gliding across the room involved in their conversation and hardly noticing the crowd of first-years.

"Forgive and forget, I say," a fat little priest-ghost was saying, "we ought to give him a second chance -"

"My dear Friar, haven't we given Peeves all the chances he deserved? He gives us all a bad name and you know, he's not really even a ghost - I say, what are you all doing here?" The ghost who had been expounding on the faults of Peeves had suddenly noticed the first years, and Harry had a sinking and slightly sick feeling that he was the only one of the living to have noticed the slight wobble of the ghost's head against the stiff ruff.

Nobody answered the ghost.

"New students?" the priest-ghost said, smiling around at them. "About to be Sorted, I suppose?"

A few people nodded.

"Hope to see you in Hufflepuff!" the priest-ghost continued. "My old house, you know."

"Move along now." Harry was never so glad to hear Auntie's voice. "The Sorting Ceremony's about to start."

The ghosts floated through the opposite wall, one by one, as Auntie - no, he had to call her _Professor_ now, didn't he? - watched, turning back to the assembled first-years once the last ghost had floated on.

"Now, form a line and follow me."

Harry slipped in between Neville and a tall black-skinned boy, and they processed out of the little room, across the hall, and through a set of double doors into the Great Hall.

The first thing Harry was struck by was the purely frivolous use of magic. Really, floating candles when a few simple candelabras and chandeliers would do just as well? Even _Startear_ wasn't that wasteful with his spells, and the archmage loved to show off when given any opportunity.

The next thing he was struck by was the sheer volume of people. There were four long tables, packed to the brim with students and laid with golden plates and goblets - again, such a waste of resources, wood and clay worked just as well unless you were setting the table for someone like the late Lord Nasher or for Lord Nevalle - and a fifth table at the top of the hall where the teachers sat. Auntie - _Professor McGonagall_ led the first years up to the table, bringing them to a halt in a line in front of the staff table and turning them to face the rest of the students.

So many faces, all staring at them…Harry looked up towards the ceiling, snorting slightly when he caught sight of the velvet black sky.

"It's bewitched to look like the sky outside," the bushy-haired girl whispered to someone else not too far from him. "I read about it in _Hogwarts, A History_."

"It's wasteful is what it is," Harry muttered, ignoring the questioning look that Neville sent him

Harry quickly looked over when Professor McGonagall set a four-legged stool between the line and the rest of the Hall, setting a pointed hat on top of that. It was the sort that Harry could have imagined Elminster wearing - not that he'd ever met the man, but Mother's second- or third-hand stories were always so very descriptive - were it not for the fact that it was patched and frayed and horribly dirty and about ready to see the inside of someone's rag bag.

For a few seconds, there was complete silence as everyone stared at the hat. Then it twitched. A rip near the brim opened wide, like a mouth, and the hat…began to sing.

The song, Harry noticed, covered the virtues of each house. Gryffindor for the brave, Ravenclaw for the intelligent, Slytherin for the cunning and ambitious, and Hufflepuff, home of the "just and loyal". Harry didn't see why that house was so looked down on - with those kinds of qualities prized, Hufflepuff should have been the house that everyone was dying to get in.

Everyone burst into applause as the hat finished its song. It bowed to each of the tables and then became still again.

"Oh, good," Neville muttered, "it's just a hat…"

Yes, just a hat. But a talking hat. With what looked like enough people to fill three contingents of Greycloaks watching. Why did they have to watch?

Professor McGonagall stepped forward again, holding a long roll of parchment. "When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted." She looked over to Harry, nodding slightly, and Harry couldn't help breathing a slight sigh of relief. She'd remembered…

"Abbot, Hannah!"

A pink-faced girl with blonde pigtails stumbled out of line, put on the hat, which fell over her eyes, and sat down. A moment's pause -

"HUFFLEPUFF!" the hat shouted.

The table on the right cheered and clapped as Hannah went to sit down with them, the little monk-ghost waving merrily at her.

"Bones, Susan!"

"HUFFLEPUFF!" the hat shouted again, and Susan scuttled off to sit next to Hannah.

"Boot, Terry!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

The second table from the left clapped this time; several of them stood up to shake hands with Terry as he joined them.

"Brocklehurst, Mandy" went to Ravenclaw as well, but "Brown, Lavender" became the first new Gryffindor, and the table on the far left exploded with cheers; Harry could see a pair of redheaded twins cat-calling. Rather rude, he thought.

"Bulstrode, Millicent" became a Slytherin. The current crop of Slytherins looked a bit unpleasant - nothing like he'd imagined his mother's class to be from her descriptions.

He was starting to get a bit nervous, even though he knew there was no call for it. Mother had said that she knew for a fact that his Mum and Dad had his name down in Hogwarts since he was born, and even if they told him to just go home he still had his training with Ivarr well underway.

Maybe he should look into some of the medical potions and spells here - Ivarr always loved comparing their methods with others'.

"Finch-Fletchley, Justin!"

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

Sometimes, Harry noticed, the hat shouted out the house at once, but at others it took a little while to decide. "Finnigan, Seamus", a sandy-haired boy on the other side of the black boy, sat on the stool for almost a whole minute before the hat declared him a Gryffindor.

"Granger, Hermione!"

The bushy-haired brunette almost ran to the stool and jammed the hat eagerly on her head.

"GRYFFINDOR!" the hat shouted. The redhead down the line groaned.

"Greengrass"…"Hopkins"…"Jones"…then, at last -

"Kendrick, Harrison!"

Harry could hear a few whispers behind him as he stepped forward, probably because of the heavy braid bouncing between his shoulder blades. He'd bet gold that they'd thought he was a girl. Auntie gave him a small smile when he sat down, gingerly placing the hat on his head. Harry winced a little when it slid down to cover his eyes.

"Hmm," said a small voice in his ear. "Not particularly difficult."

Harry stiffened slightly, tales of enchanted objects that stole their owner's will or soul or mind screaming in his own mind.

"Do take it easy, I'm not going to remove anything from you. Plenty of courage, though. Not a bad mind, and so much talent. And such a heart. Loyal and just and not afraid of a little hard work, are we?"

"No pain, no gain," Harry muttered, feeling slightly ridiculous but still irritated enough to immediately snap out one of his mother's favorite sayings.

"Very true, very true. I suppose there's only one place for you, isn't there, Mr. Potter?"

"Wait, please, don't tell -"

"HUFFLEPUFF!" The hat shouted the word to the entire hall, but the small voice returned when Harry lifted his hands to the brim. "Don't worry, boy, I won't tell anyone."

"Thank you," Harry said before taking the hat off, setting it down gently and scurrying over to sit next to "Hopkins, Wayne" who'd been set for Hufflepuff a little before him. The rest of the table greeted him with wide smiles and cheerful salutations, as Harry did for the few more of his fellows that were sorted into Hufflepuff.

Finally, the sorting was over, Neville sorted into Gryffindor, Draco proclaimed a Slytherin before the hat could even really touch his head, and "Zabini, Blaise" sent the same way. Professor McGonagall rolled up the parchment and removed the hat from view.

Harry looked down at his empty plate, vaguely remembering the pumpkin pasties on the train and noticing how badly his stomach was growling.

The Headmaster had gotten to his feet, an old man with a flowing white beard and matching head of hair, glasses shaped like half-moons on his nose - which looked like it had been broken at least once - and wearing deep indigo robes with sleeves that billowed like wings when he opened his arms wide. He was beaming, looking as though nothing more could have pleased him than to see them all there.

"Welcome!" he said. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!

"Thank you!"

He sat back down amid a sea of applause and cheering. Harry, personally didn't know whether to laugh or not.

The boy across the table from him, Justin, he was fairly sure, leaned over to the older boy next to him and whispered, "Is he - a bit mad?"

The older boy snorted slightly, grey eyes sparkling with laughter. "He's a genius, best wizard there ever was, they say. But, yeah, he's a bit mad. Any of you want potatoes?"

Harry blinked, absorbed what he was seeing, and growled under his breath about the wastefulness of these wizards. He wasn't about to call them "mages", after all - that title was reserved for the magical and learned elite, like Safiya and Startear and the Cloaktower mages who sometimes stopped through the Keep. He still shoveled some potatoes, roast beef, and peas on his plate, though, savoring the beef and peas with each small bite.

After a little while, when it seemed everyone had eaten as much as they could, the food on the plates faded, leaving the dishes themselves completely sparkling clean. A moment later, the desserts appeared.

Harry, to his eternal embarrassment, had to have Wayne and Justin help identify what was what - even the older boy, who had introduced himself as Cedric Diggory, got in on the fun.

"How can you not know what these are?" a snooty blonde - Ernie, Harry thought - said from Justin's other side.

"They're not exactly well-known where I'm from," Harry said. "I mean, I know what the pie and the strawberries are - pass me some of those, please? And the cream? Thanks. - but a lot of this stuff…dessert at home is usually just a piece of fruit from whatever tree is in season, maybe a pie if Cook's feeling generous and Uncle Duncan's not around. My family lives near a farm village out in the middle of nowhere."

The talk turned to families after that. Ernie, they found out, was a ninth-generation pureblood and extremely proud of it. Cedric was a pureblood, as well, but he didn't seem to be as hung up about it as Ernie. The blond had sputtered when Cedric shrugged and said he wasn't sure how many generations he went back, nor did he particularly care.

"Think about it like this," Cedric said, "pretty much all of the old families have married into each other, right? What happens when you breed animals from really closely related litters?"

"Deformities and useless animals," Harry said. Uncle Bevil had to put five pups down a season ago just because of that. "I've seen some born with twisted limbs, stone deaf, or else just so runty that they _can't_ make it. There might've been one with five legs in there, too. And that shouldn't happen in the first place."

"Exactly. You've got to introduce new blood every so often."

Ernie conceded the point, though he didn't look appeased, and Wayne and Justin just looked vaguely green and pushed their desserts away from them.

Harry looked over at the High Table again, hoping to at least catch Professor McGonagall's eye and give her some little sign that he was doing all right so far. The huge bear of a man who had led them across the lake was drinking deeply from his goblet, Professor McGonagall was talking to Professor Dumbledore. The only other teachers that caught his eye were a nervous-looking man wearing a ridiculous turban and a hook-nosed man with greasy black hair and deathly pale skin.

The teacher with the turban turned to say something to Professor Dumbledore at the same moment that the hook-nosed teacher's eyes caught his, and a slight pain twitched across what was left of the old lightning-bolt scar.

Harry brought one hand up to touch the fringe over the broken scar, using the motion to hide his face and wince slightly. This…was not good.

* * *

Severus Snape rolled his eyes slightly when Quirrell turned to speak with Albus. Really, the man was even more of a stuttering imbecile now than he was before he took his sabbatical. He turned away from the pair - perfectly matched, he thought. Albus could prattle on all he liked, and Quirrell was too utterly spineless to say anything to get out of the conversation.

His eye caught on one of the new Hufflepuffs. Kendrick shouldn't have stood out. He was about average height and weight for his age, maybe a little smaller, pale complexion that made his dark braid and accompanying fringe stand out in stark relief. The braid might have been long for a muggle-born, but it was within acceptable limits for a pureblood. If he remembered Lucius's lectures correctly, at least. Eyes, before the boy lifted a hand to pat at the thick fringe, were green, but that didn't exactly put him on the muggle Endangered Species list.

No, it was a faint feeling of déjà vu niggling at him, along with a few other issues associated with the boy's mother. There was a slight physical resemblance to someone he'd known…but it wouldn't shake loose no matter how hard he thought.

He growled, smirking a little when nervous little Quirrell jumped and squeaked, and returned to impaling his desserts. He'd never had much of a sweet tooth to begin with - the tormented former éclair and trifle on his plate were courtesy of one Albus Dumbledore, who continually exhorted him to eat more. No, thank you.

Severus looked over at the Hufflepuff table again, a quick glance, just enough to spot Kendrick making merry with some of the other boys in his year along with a particularly friendly third year.

He almost hadn't believed it when Narcissa had told him that Elyssia had been seen in Diagon Alley, probably wouldn't have believed it if Draco hadn't mentioned talking to her and her oldest. Narcissa had been prepared to hex him into an early grave - again - until his godson pointed out that, yes, Harry was Draco's age, so that particular timeline was shot, and Severus had pointed out that, no, Severus hadn't done anything of an overly sensitive nature with the woman before that…_incident_.

His fork put a few more bleeding holes in the dying éclair, each stab vicious and surgically implanted to draw the maximum amount of crème from each strike. He would ignore the situation for now - treat Kendrick like just another Hufflepuff (somewhere between Slytherin and Gryffindor, with a little more inclination towards the latter) and put his mother out of mind. Easy enough - she was already out of sight.

The mutilated desserts faded from sight, and Severus was sure he could hear the indignant squeaking of the house elves from his seat. All well and good, but that meant that the feast was drawing to a close.

That, he'd more than learned in his decade of teaching, was _not_ good.

* * *

"Ahem - just a few more words now that we are all fed and watered. I have a few start-of-term notices to give you."

Professor Dumbledore was on his feet again, and Auntie looked to be mentally preparing for an invasion or something of the like.

"First years should note that the forest on the grounds is forbidden to all pupils. And a few of our older students would do well to remember that as well. I have also been asked by Mr. Filch, the caretaker, to remind you all that no magic should be used between classes in the corridors.

"Quidditch trials will be held in the second week of the term. Anyone interested in playing for their house teams should contact Madam Hooch.

"And finally, I must tell you that this year, the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side is out of bounds to everyone who does not wish to die a very painful death."

A few people laughed, but it had a nervous sound to Harry's ears.

Justin leaned over to Cedric. "He's not serious?" the muggle-born muttered.

"I think he is," the older Hufflepuff said, looking thoughtfully at the Headmaster as Harry nodded his agreement. "It's…odd… He usually gives us a reason why we're not allowed to go somewhere. The forest's full of dangerous beasts, everyone knows that - though sometimes I wonder if Fred and George really get that. Maybe he told the prefects?"

"And now, before we go to bed, let us sing the school song!" Dumbledore cried. Auntie's smile, Harry noticed, looked like it was fixed on with nails and about a hundred feet of rope, perhaps with an added petrifaction spell in the mix.

Dumbledore gave his wand a flick, and a long golden ribbon flew out of it, which rose above the tables and twisted itself into words in a manner much like he imagined a snake would do if it ever had the inclination.

"Everyone pick their favorite tune," Dumbledore said, "and off we go!"

Harry immediately jammed his fingers in his ears, watching the mouths of the people around him to judge when it was safe.

Unfortunately, everyone finished at different times. Even if the majority were done, it was still an unholy cacophony that actually some how managed to outrank the one time that Deekin and the new bard at the Phoenix Tail had tried to play a duet. At last, the noise died down to two boys singing along to a very slow funeral march. They had good voices, at least.

Dumbledore conducted their last few lines with his wand, and he was one of those who clapped loudest when they'd finished. Auntie was another, but Harry was sure it was for an entirely different reason.

"Ah, music," the old man said, wiping his eyes. "A magic beyond all we do here! And now, bedtime. Off you trot!"


	13. Night and Days

_**Disclaimer:**__ I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or Neverwinter Nights 2. Those belong to JK Rowling and the geniuses at Wizards of the Coast and Obsidian Entertainment, respectively. If anything looks like it was taken from _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone_, it probably was - mainly dialogue and descriptions. Again, I don't own, so please don't sue._

* * *

**Yet, Never, in Extremity**

_Night and Days_

* * *

"_Hope" is the thing with feathers – _

_That perches in the soul – _

_And sings the tune without the words – _

_And never stops – at all – _

_And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – _

_And sore must be the storm – _

_That could abash the little Bird_

_That kept so many warm – _

_I've heard it in the chillest land – _

_And on the strangest Sea – _

_Yet, never, in Extremity,_

_It asked a crumb – of Me._

_- Emily Dickinson_

* * *

As wasteful as he thought the type of magic Hogwarts used, he couldn't deny that it made life interesting. Whether that was Miss Kana's "ancient Shou curse" form of the word or the good form, he couldn't quite say.

The Hufflepuff dorms were easy to find from the Great Hall, something that each of the first-years had thanked their respective deities for several times during the first few weeks. Harry rather liked the dormitory - he wasn't used to sleeping below ground, but everything about the place sort of reminded him of the Keep. Perhaps they didn't have the yellow hangings or the overstuffed black and yellow armchairs with matching pillows back home, or the squishy-soft canopy beds, but the entire place was full of the same homey feel.

The rest of his housemates were quite nice so far as well - some of the older students, the prefects and Cedric included, had made it their duty to get the "firsties" acquainted with Hogwarts. Anyone in a Hufflepuff robe, Harry had found, was more than willing to help their housemates find their next class.

The classes in and of themselves were fairly interesting, as well. There was Astrology, at midnight every Monday, where they had to examine the night skies and plot out the stars and study the courses of the planets. They had Herbology three times a week with the Hufflepuff Head of House, a cheerful plump witch named Professor Sprout. Harry appreciated that she was like another bit of home - she reminded him of a strange mix of the stories of Grobnar's cheerfulness with Orlen's green thumbs, and he had developed a particular liking for gardening after years of helping in the fields and studying medicinal plants with Ivarr.

History of Magic should have been interesting. "Should have been" were the key words, since Professor Binns had a voice that made the class more boring than watching grass grow. Without "help". Most of the students used the class as naptime, except for the most academically inclined and Harry. He wasn't taking notes - he was watching the ghost teaching the class with a wary eye.

Professor Flitwick, the Charms teacher and the Ravenclaw head, was a wizard about the same height as Deekin and just as excitable. Harry hadn't thought that was possible, and, by the response he got from the letter after he mentioned it in the previous one he'd written to his family, Father and Callum hadn't, either. Mother was, reportedly, still laughing at the comparison.

Auntie Min - he _still_ had trouble remembering to call her Professor McGonagall in his head, and he thanked Tyr every day that he hadn't slipped up verbally as of yet - simply reinforced his questionable opinion of Grampa Daeghun's sanity. She was strict, completely no-nonsense, laying down the rules the moment they sat down in the first Transfiguration class.

"Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," she said. "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."

Then she changed her desk into a pig and back again. Harry hadn't known that particular transformation was possible in the first place - he'd seen Safiya change bandits into chickens and fuzzy little woodland creatures, but inanimate objects into animals… Everyone had been impressed and couldn't wait to get started, but soon realized that they weren't going to be changing furniture into pigs for a very long time. Instead, they'd taken a lot of complicated notes and started trying to turn the match they'd each been given into a needle. Several of the Hufflepuffs managed to make the match silvery or pointy by the end of class - Harry had managed to get his to look vaguely needle-shaped, though the eye end was still red and a bit lumpy.

The class everyone had been looking forward to was Defense Against the Dark Arts, but Quirrell's lessons were a joke. The classroom reeked of garlic, which everyone said was to ward off a vampire he'd met in Romania and was afraid would be coming back to get him one of these days. Harry couldn't see why the man hadn't killed the unholy thing dead again in the first place. The ridiculous turban, Quirrell had told them, was a thank-you gift from an African prince for getting rid of a troublesome zombie. No one quite believed the story, especially when Ernie had asked to hear how Quirrell had gotten rid of it. The man had gone pink and started talking about the weather, of all things. Harry especially hated the class - he always came away with the same twitching headache that he'd gotten the first night, and the vague sense that something _wasn't right_ about the man. It could be paranoia talking, though, and the smell of garlic never had sat particularly well with him.

Thursday mornings were Double Potions with the Ravenclaws, and the older students had taken special care to detail the minor horror that was Professor Snape beforehand. "Head of Slytherin," was the most common refrain, "so he tends to favor them. We're not Gryffindors, though, so as long as you keep your head down and don't cause any trouble or explosions, you shouldn't be _too_ traumatized." It was the "_too_" that had Harry's stomach twisting up in nervous knots when he'd entered the dungeon classroom and sat down next to Wayne.

The Potions classroom was nothing like the Hufflepuff dormitories, for all that they were on the same level of the castle. The Hufflepuff dormitories were warm and cheerful, while the Potions classroom was colder than the rest of the castle and was fairly creepy. That wasn't taking into account the jars of pickled animals and various briny _bits_ lining the walls.

Professor Snape, like most of the other teachers, had started by taking the roll call, but he'd paused at Harry's name, turning a cool black stare towards him before the professor had continued. Wayne had raised a curious eyebrow, and Harry could only shrug slightly in response. How was he to know what that was about?

Finally, Professor Snape finished calling off the names and looked up at the class. It was probably the first _good_ view that Harry had of the man's face for longer than five seconds, and he couldn't help wondering if Professor Snape was the Severus Snape that Mother would sometimes talk about. The hair was the same as he'd imagined, the pale skin and dark eyes and the nose that looked like someone had jumped up and down on it multiple times before trying to put it back in some semblance of a nose-like shape.

"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making," he began. His voice barely rose above a whisper, but they caught every word - like Harry's mother and father, like Miss Kana, like Auntie Min and Grampa Daeghun, Professor Snape had the gift of keeping a group silent without effort. "As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses…I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death - if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."

There was complete and utter silence in the room, and the first thought that entered Harry's mind was that the Professor should _really_ meet Safiya. The two would get along splendidly. Most of the Ravenclaws were on the edge of their seats, almost eager to prove that they weren't dunderheads.

"MacDougal!" Professor Snape said suddenly, head turning towards a dark-haired Ravenclaw. "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

She didn't miss a beat. "A powerful sleeping potion, sir. Draught of the Living Death?"

"Was that a question or an answer, MacDougal?"

The girl swallowed visibly. "A-an answer, sir."

"Boot! Where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"

"The, ah, the stomach of a, um, goat, sir."

"Hm. Kendrick! What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"

Harry had to keep himself from sagging in relief. This was one he knew, exceedingly well. "No difference, sir. They're the same plant, also called aconite."

"I should hope all of you took those answers down." There was a sudden scrambling for quills and parchment, while the professor stood and glowered down at them. No points given or taken, so far, and Harry thought the situation was rather decent so far.

The professor set the class to brewing a simple potion to cure boils, one that Harry took down the ingredients and procedure for with an eagerness that surprised Wayne and probably most of the Ravenclaws. Ivarr, he couldn't help thinking as he and Wayne began the millions of minor yet important steps, would _love_ this.

All the while, Professor Snape swept around in his long black cloak, watching them weigh dried nettles and crush snake fangs, criticizing everyone. It was a little nerve-rattling, but Harry thought that, all in all, they'd done fairly well. There were no explosions or horrible accidents, even if Hannah and Susan's potion was the green of spring grass instead of various minor shades of the dark pine-needle green that everyone else's was.

It was odd, though, the looks that Snape gave him. Like he was trying to place him, that same sort of "tip of the tongue" look that Mother sometimes had.

Harry walked out of the dungeons with Wayne and Zacharias Smith at the end of the class, shrugging the matter off. Professor Snape had probably gone to school with Harry's mother, and it wasn't unreasonable that the pair would keep in touch. That was all it was.

* * *

The days seemed to pass quickly, and Harry was fast getting used to life at Hogwarts. He and Wayne were fairly good friends, the pair usually working together for any class project that required pairs, adding Megan Jones and Zacharias Smith if three or more were required. Harry still regularly chatted with Neville Longbottom, too, something that Neville seemed grateful for. Harry couldn't help wondering sometimes if the pudgy boy had any friends in Gryffindor. Draco was more of an acquaintance than anything, like the nobles' children Harry would sometimes have stilted conversations with when matters required he and Callum to travel to Neverwinter with their parents. They knew each other through their parents, and perhaps they'd like each other if the circumstances were less formal, if they were allowed to be less formal.

Wayne had, in the course of their fast friendship, taken it on himself to explain all things Muggle and Wizard that Harry expressed ignorance about.

Halloween was one of these.

"It started out as a religious holiday," Wayne was saying as they walked down towards the Great Hall for the Halloween feast, "the vigil before All Saints Day - November first - which is a Christian holy day to honor the departed saints. The faithful departed are honored on All Souls Day, which is November second."

Harry tilted his head, swiping at a bit of his fringe that had fallen into his eyes. "_Started out _as a religious holiday?"

"I don't get how you can stand your hair that long. Over the years it's turned into a really commercial holiday. Mum's convinced that it was taken over by the candy companies."

"What does candy have to do with a holiday meant to respect the dead?"

"…I forgot you'd never heard of trick-or-treat. What do you do for Halloween?"

"We don't celebrate it. Not on the last day of October, at least. The Feast of the Moon is…early December. The first, I think. There's no candy involved - we sit around and tell stories about people who've died that we knew. Mother's stories are always the best, especially the ones about Mum and Dad."

"Are you adopted or something? Not that it's important or anything, but you said 'Mother' and then 'Mum and Dad'…"

"Yeah, I guess. Mum and Dad died when I was a baby, and, because Mother was a good friend of Mum's, they asked her to take care of me if anything happened to them. So what's 'trick or treat'?"

Wayne didn't answer, making a vague "tell you later" sort of motion with his hands as he and Harry gaped at the extravagant decorations in the Hall. The golden plates were back out, the candles floating in pumpkins with angular and slightly haunting faces carved into them. Hundreds, possibly thousands of live bats fluttered from the walls and ceiling while maybe a thousand more swooped over the tables in low black clouds. They sort of reminded Harry of Professor Snape; Wayne started choking and snickering at the same time when he said so.

Outside of the decorations, and the fact that the food popped up on the plates as suddenly as it had that first night, there really wasn't much of a difference between Halloween and any other night. Harry chatted with Wayne, exchanged greetings with Draco who was sitting at the Slytherin table in the seat, quite literally, just behind him.

He was reaching for a baked potato when Quirrell skidded into the Hall, turban askew and terror clear on his face. Everyone stared as the man ran to Professor Dumbledore's chair, slumped against the table, and gasped, "Troll - in the dungeons - thought you ought to know."

He then sank to the floor in a dead faint.

The rest of the room was in an uproar. Harry could feel the blood draining from his face. He'd read about this plane's versions of trolls, but the version that always leaped into his mind at the word was the trolls of Faerûn. The horrid, stinking beasts that some of the Greycloaks said would regenerate even a lost head if they weren't killed with fire or acid in a _very_ _timely_ manner. He sincerely hoped that someone knew a fire spell.

It took several purple firecrackers exploding from the end of Professor Dumbledore's wand to bring silence.

"Prefects," he rumbled, "lead your Houses back to the dormitories immediately!"

Just down the table from him, Harry could see the Hufflepuff and Slytherin prefects exchange a _look _between the twelve of them. A "how stupid _is_ he" sort of _look_.

"Hufflepuffs!" Simms, a hulking seventh-year prefect, called out, waving one huge arm. "Hufflepuffs to the Library!"

Harry looked over to the staff table, noticed Professor Sprout nod approvingly and Professor Snape do likewise when one of the Slytherin prefects said the same.

"If this is a typical Halloween," Harry said to Wayne and Draco as the two houses moved out of the Hall, "you'll forgive me if I'd rather not participate next year."

* * *

Hermione Granger hadn't been expecting a visit from anyone under the age of fifteen, and fifteen only because Percy Weasley had been so nice to her so far. Too bad the rest of his brothers didn't take after him.

It was no small surprise, then, to see Neville Longbottom and a green-eyed Hufflepuff walk into the Infirmary. Her first impulse idea was that they were here to get Neville under Madam Pomfrey's tender care - Neville was a holy horror at Potions, after all, though she often wondered how much of that was nervousness from having Professor Snape hanging over his shoulder, and Neville had a blooming shiner that left his right eye swollen shut for the moment.

That idea was quickly squashed when Neville and the Hufflepuff stopped at the side of her bed.

"Hi, Hermione. How're you feeling?"

It was a stupid question, but Neville was so earnest and normally so unbelievably _shy_ that she didn't have the heart to say so. It would have been like kicking a puppy, or something equally small and cute. She smiled slightly instead, flapping a hand in the universal gesture for "so-so", her dominant hand resting lightly on the ballpoint pen and legal pad in her lap. She was under strict orders from Madam Pomfrey not to speak for the next few days, after all, and she had to have _some_ way to communicate. The troll had shattered her jaw, not to mention a few of her ribs and an arm.

Hermione officially hated Skele-Gro.

Neville was blushing slightly, wincing a little as though he'd realized what he'd said. "That was a stupid question, wasn't it? Oh, this is Harry."

The Hufflepuff lifted a hand in a little wave. "We heard about what happened from Professor McGonagall, so we thought we'd come visit before the crowds came in."

Hermione couldn't say anything, but one didn't need to speak to snort. _-There won't __be__ any crowds,-_ she wrote. _-I'm not particularly well-liked in Gryffindor. Or anywhere else.-_ She ripped the paper from the pad, passing it over to Harry. Neville read over his shoulder.

Both boys were frowning a little when they looked up. "If it makes you feel better," Neville said, "Parvati and Lavender really went after Ron for what he did."

Harry's eyebrows disappeared into his bangs, and he pointed at Neville's black eye. "So did you, Neville. You should have seen it, Hermione. We ran into Weasley just as Auntie Min told us what had happened to you, and he got defensive and said…he said something really stupid. Then Neville got him right in the nose. Of course, then Weasley got in a lucky shot to Neville's eye, but Auntie Min broke up the fight before it went any further."

If Hermione could have gaped, she would have. Neville, sweet, shy, perpetually scared _Neville Longbottom_ had _punched_ someone? In front of their Head of House?

_-Neville, while I'm __very__ grateful that you stood up for me…how many points did you lose?-_

Neville read the note, passed the pad back to her. "None, actually. Weasley lost thirty because of the fight and because of what he said."

"She should have taken more, if you want my opinion. That or let you finish pummeling him."

Now _Hermione's _eyebrows disappeared into her bangs. This boy was a _Hufflepuff_? -_I thought your house was generally nonviolent. And why were you calling Professor McGonagall "Auntie Min"?-_

Harry read it and passed back the pad, his face a bright red that, combined with his eyes, made him look like some bizarre Christmas tree ornament. "I can see how you might get that idea, but Hufflepuffs are, and I quote, 'Just and loyal. Those patient Hufflepuffs are true and unafraid of toil.' No nonviolence clause there. Besides, it wouldn't be just to let Weasley off scot-free. And what he said, before and after, wasn't chivalrous in the least. I don't know about him, but I was always brought up to believe that you don't make girls cry."

"You didn't answer the 'Auntie Min' question."

Harry made a face at Neville, prompting a fit of smothered and slightly pained giggles from Hermione. She'd have to remember not to laugh for a while, as ridiculous as that sounded, since her regrown ribs still ached when she did.

"Promise you won't tell her I slipped and called her that?" He waited until she and Neville nodded. "Mother is her niece. My little brother and I call her 'Auntie' instead of 'Grandma' or 'Great-Aunt' because she's threatened to turn us into chickens for a day if we call her that."

…Hermione really needed to remember not to laugh. But…it was nice of them to try and cheer her up. Maybe, when Madam Pomfrey finally let her out…

"We'll just have to come and visit every day until you're released, right, Neville?"

"Yeah. I can bring your homework by, if you'd like."

A small smile flitted across Hermione's lips as her pen skittered over paper to join in the conversation. No "maybe" about it - she had the definite feeling that she'd just found her first friends in years.

It was a very nice feeling.


	14. Tidings of Comfort and Joy

_**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or Neverwinter Nights 2. Those belong to JK Rowling and the geniuses at Wizards of the Coast and Obsidian Entertainment, respectively. _

* * *

**Yet, Never, in Extremity**

_Tidings of Comfort and Joy_

* * *

"_Hope" is the thing with feathers – _

_That perches in the soul – _

_And sings the tune without the words – _

_And never stops – at all – _

_And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – _

_And sore must be the storm – _

_That could abash the little Bird_

_That kept so many warm – _

_I've heard it in the chillest land – _

_And on the strangest Sea – _

_Yet, never, in Extremity,_

_It asked a crumb – of Me._

_- Emily Dickinson_

* * *

No matter how interesting Hogwarts was, no matter how many new friends he had made, Harry would always be glad to return to the comfort of Crossroad Keep. And these sorts of days, a clear and sunny sky but cold enough to need a scarf and his favorite rabbit-fur-lined cloak, were some of his favorite. Well, not quite. What made days like today his favorite was that he and Mother were up on the walls, watching Miss Kana and Father spar for the new recruits while they talked. The weather was icing on the cake.

"You really weren't upset that I wasn't in Slytherin?"

Mother smiled. "Of course not, sweetling. Your mum and dad were both Gryffindors, remember, so I was almost expecting you to come home bedecked in red and gold. I'm glad you're in Hufflepuff, though - I always thought you would be, especially once you started lessons with Ivarr. You've kept up well with those lessons, I hope?"

"Yes, Mother. I think Ivarr was a bit surprised at how well my healing was coming along - Hermione, Wayne, and Neville let me practice on their scrapes and cuts, and I know he was really interested in the things we were taught in Potions."

"Who's your Potions teacher? I don't think you ever told us in your letters."

"Really? I thought…oh well. Professor Snape teaches Potions - Hermione says he's really hard on the Gryffindors, but he's not too bad with us and the Ravenclaws. He swoops about like an overgrown bat, but he doesn't take points off for breathing or anything…Mother? Mother, don't forget to breathe…"

It looked like his mother really _was_ having that particular problem. She was bent over the wall, elbows on the wide stones and her hands firmly pressed over her mouth and a little of her nose to muffle her laughter. It wasn't working too well - Father's head was craned so far back to look up at them that Harry was sure he'd have a crick in his neck or else fall back on his rear. He focused back on the fight, though, when Harry saw Kana take advantage of his distraction to aim a swipe at his legs.

"S-Snape..._Professor!_ G-gods, you - you poor children…" She didn't try to muffle her laughter that time, her howls enough to send Shadow diving into Harry's hood to get away from the woman. Never mind that the cat was getting a bit too big to do that. Mother finally calmed down after a moment, wiping the tears from her eyes and mumbling apologies through the last of her giggles. "I-I'm sorry. You were saying?"

"I was right! He _was_ the guy you went to school with."

"Sweetling, there were more than a few of those."

"…You know what I mean, Mother. Anyway, he's not too bad - really brilliant with the subject but he could use some social skills…and some hygiene work…but he keeps looking at me really oddly."

"Oddly?"

" 'Oddly' like… 'Oddly' like that look you get when something's on the tip of your tongue, or when Callum's trying to think up a good excuse for being late to lessons."

"Ah. I think part of it is that you're my son - he's old friends with Draco's father, you know - and he knew that I wasn't a mother when you were born."

"How'd he know that?"

Mother's already dark cheeks got a little darker and she cleared her throat. "Never you mind. It _could_ also be that you remind him of your mum and dad."

"Really?"

"If you had glasses and had kept your hair short, I don't doubt that you'd be the image of your dad. But your eyes are very much your mum's, and you certainly look much more like her with your hair as long as it is."

"Which is another good reason for me not to cut my hair. Megan and Hermione have been teasing me about having hair longer than theirs for a while. I think Hermione's jealous - hers is long, but it's frizzy and bushy, like someone called a lightning bolt down on her hair."

"Really? I wonder if she's tried Sleekeasy's…"

"I don't think she knows what it is, Mother. Hermione's Muggleborn."

"Ah. You know, now that I think of it, you haven't said much about your Defense class, either. Everything's all right there?"

Harry fidgeted for a moment. "My grades are okay. The teacher's Professor Quirrell - he's a bit of a joke. He's really nervous and he stutters all the time, and he wears this _turban_…"

"Harry. What's bothering you?"

"It's…you'll laugh… The classroom always smells like garlic, and there's this weird smell coming from the turban, like he shoved a squirrel soaked in cat pee and wrapped in garlic in there and let it die. He _said_ it was a gift for getting rid of some zombie, but no one believes him, and people say all the garlic's to keep some vampire he fought in Romania to keep from getting him - _still _don't see why he didn't just kill it again in the first place."

"But that's not what has you spooked, is it? You don't look this skittish about a few cloves of garlic, no matter how much you hate the smell."

Harry sighed and pulled Shadow from his hood, turning to sit on the stone wall as he cradled the black cat close to his chest. "Well…It's this feeling I get whenever I'm around him, like there's something wrong with him. Not wrong like body odor or Professor Snape's teeth," there was a snort from his mother, "but _wrong_. Like Hosttower mage around you _wrong_. And I always get these headaches, like someone with really sharp fingernails keeps poking right where my scar is but inside my brain. It's stupid, I know…"

"It's not stupid, sweetling. I'm very glad you told me, actually. Let's go talk to Ivarr, okay? Tell him what you just told me about the scar and let's see if he can do anything about that before Auntie comes to pick you up."

"Yes, Mother."

* * *

"You're done, lad," Ivarr said, smiling down at his student.

Lyssi nodded when she caught the priest's glance. "Sweetling, why don't you go ahead and run along? Your brother should be nearly finished with his lessons."

"Yes, Mother."

She waited until he had left the temple before turning back to Ivarr. "Your opinion?"

"There's something clinging to the scar, something dark. Other than the headaches, it's not doing any real harm to Harry, but…"

"But?"

"But I can't remove all of it. What I couldn't get when I healed the physical scar is resisting all attempts at purification. It may become an annoyance if he needs to fight the sort of creature that put it there in the first place."

"So what would you suggest?"

"I'll remind him before he leaves that his curative orisons should be enough to handle a headache. We'll begin his education in still spells and silent spells as well."

"Ivarr? Would you be willing to go over how to turn undead with him as well? I've got a bad feeling…"

Ivarr smiled, the expression barely visible under his beard. "Of course, my lady."

"Thank you."

Lyssi managed to wait until after she'd left the temple before groaning and pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers. Damn the wizards, she should have grabbed Auntie Min and had Safiya seal the way shut behind her before that stupid letter ever came. But it was too late for self-recrimination now, wasn't it? It was just one more in the long list of things that her boys Did Not Need, and she was going to do as much as she could to help them.

So resolved, she started for Safiya's little corner of the castle. Perhaps she could enchant a few protective items for the boys…Harry needed to get at least one Christmas present from his family, after all.


	15. Fame and Misfortune

_**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or Neverwinter Nights 2. Those belong to JK Rowling and the geniuses at Wizards of the Coast and Obsidian Entertainment, respectively. _

* * *

**Yet, Never, in Extremity**

_Fame and Misfortune_

* * *

"_Hope" is the thing with feathers – _

_That perches in the soul – _

_And sings the tune without the words – _

_And never stops – at all – _

_And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – _

_And sore must be the storm – _

_That could abash the little Bird_

_That kept so many warm – _

_I've heard it in the chillest land – _

_And on the strangest Sea – _

_Yet, never, in Extremity,_

_It asked a crumb – of Me._

_- Emily Dickinson_

* * *

Lyssi stretched in her chair, inching her feet to the next warm spot on the hearth. Not that the beginning of Kythorn was cold, per se, but Crossroad Keep had an annoying tendency to get very cold very quickly during the nights, especially the stone floors. Though the cold _did_ tend to be mitigated by her husband's Rashemi-bred body - the man was like her own private furnace.

"For m'lady's pleasure." Gann pressed a goblet of her favorite spiced wine into her hands - the smell alone was heavenly - and kissed her in that way of his that never failed to leave her knees a mass of jelly. It was a very good thing, she absently thought as he took a seat near the hearth and tugged one of her knees to rest on his shoulder, that she was already sitting down.

They sat in silence for a while, so used to each other and the way they thought that any conversation was carried on through facial expressions and gestures more than through words. It was one of their little rituals, carried over from before Callum was born - that simple quiet time where they could just be Lyssi and Gann, not the Knight Captain and Her Consort or any term related to Spirit Eaters or Neverwintan nobility or that blasted silver sword. She shot a brief glare at the offending object, sparkling merrily in the firelight on the rack near the bed.

And Gann was smirking up at her when she turned back, one eyebrow raised and a hand skimming along her calf in such a way that it made her shiver. "Give me some time, my love, and I'm sure we could revise your opinion of that bed."

"I like the bed well enough. Especially when you're in it."

"Then we'll have to see what we can do to remedy that woeful deficiency, hm?"

They'd just made it to the bed when Auntie Min's voice came shrieking through the fire.

"_Ignore_ her," Gann groaned, his lips dancing along Lyssi's collarbone as he spoke. "Maybe she'll go away."

"Elyssia! Elyssia Kendrick McGonagall, I know you're there! It's about your son!"

_That_ was something she couldn't ignore. "What?"

"He's…missing."

"_WHAT?"_

* * *

Harry woke up with the sort of headache that Tyr might smite someone with and the taste of dirty socks doing a dwarven jig over his taste buds. And there was the feeling of someone running a finger over the patch of skin between his eyebrows and up along over the tops of them, just like Father did when he was a kid and he couldn't sleep.

He turned his head, blinked - yes, that _was_ Father next to the bed. What was his father doing here?

"Take it easy, little bear," his father said, leaning forward a little more to brush the tips of Harry's bangs out of his eyes. "You're all right."

"No," Harry muttered, struggling to sit up. "No, we've got to tell the Headmaster or Auntie - Quirrell's got the Philosopher's Stone, he's using it for Voldemort -"

"_Harry_. It's _all right_. Your headmaster has the stone, and your mother is currently biting his head off - and your aunt's - for keeping something that dangerous in a school."

"But, Father -"

"Shh! You wouldn't want me to get thrown out of here, would you? That Madam Pomfrey is _scary_."

Madam Pomfrey? Harry spared a moment to look around for the first time. The infirmary? He was sitting up in one of many white-sheeted beds through the long room, but his seemed to have a good portion of a sweet shop spilling over a little table next to him. "Oh… But, Father, how did you know to come?"

And was it just him, or was there a little tic twitching over his father's eye? "Your aunt fire-called us," he said, sounding like nothing more like Callum when he was sulking. "When you didn't get back before ten minutes after curfew, your friend Wayne got worried and mentioned it to a prefect, who brought the matter to Professor Sprout, who _then_ talked to your aunt, who had sent you on your way five minutes _before_ curfew. Then when she found that amulet Ivarr gave you on one of the stairways, she suspected foul play and fire-called us. Harry, what happened?"

* * *

It was very evident at times, Minerva thought, exactly _who _had raised William's daughter. This current conversation, for example.

The rapier wit and sharp tongue were characteristic of her niece, and, really, Minerva had almost expected the verbal flaying that had been leveled on Albus when Elyssia had stormed into the office. But Elyssia was usually a creature of fire and passion, not this regal-cold woman whose eyes were more reminiscent of ice chips than anything else. Minerva had no doubt that _this_ was Daeghun Farlong's daughter, fostered or not; _this_ was the Knight Captain of Crossroad Keep and one of the famed Neverwinter Nine, _this_ was the woman who had faced gods and godlike beings without flinching.

"Now," the Knight Captain said in that deathly calm tone, the nails of one hand drumming a slow tattoo on Albus's desk, "you two _will_ tell me what occurred."

"I sent Harry on his way after our evening tea, as per the usual for every week," Minerva said. "I gave him a pass, just in case he ran into Argus before he got back to the Hufflepuff dormitories - it was about five minutes prior to curfew when we realized the time."

* * *

"I took the back way from Auntie's office. It's a little faster. P-professor Quirrell was coming up the stairs as I was going down; I said 'good evening,' and then I scooted around him to keep going, since he gave me a really bad feeling."

Gann put a hand on his foster son's shoulder and squeezed slightly. "What happened then?"

Harry curled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his knees. "H-he grabbed me by the back of my robes - the chain of that amulet Mother gave me, it snapped when he did that - and started dragging me up the stairs with him. Father, he called me 'Harry Potter.' How'd he _know_?"

"I don't know, little bear. We'll find out, don't worry." _And then I'll rip whoever let it slip limb from spirit-cursed limb. Or point Elyssia at them and summon a few dire bears to take care of the remains._

"He dragged me along up to the corridor on the third floor - the one the Headmaster said not to go in at the Welcoming Feast. There was this big dog in there, with three heads - I think Neville said he'd heard Weasley and Finnegan and Thomas talking about it earlier in the year. He used a charm to play music - it dropped off to sleep - and then he pulled me into the trapdoor with him onto a huge Devil's Snare, then there was the room with the flying keys and the giant wizard's chess set and th-the _troll_ and the riddle with all of the potions and the fire, then there was that _mirror_…"

* * *

"The Mirror of Erised," the headmaster said, rubbing at the bridge of his nose, "was a trick of my own devising. I had designed the charm so that no one who wanted to use the Philosopher's Stone would be able to retrieve it from the mirror. Unfortunately, I had not foreseen the possibility that Quirrell, or rather, Voldemort in Quirrell's body would be tempted to snatch up young Mr. Potter as a hostage and a less-than-willing retriever."

"You will refer to my son by his proper title, Headmaster," Elyssia said, so calm and quiet that she may as well have been discussing the weather and not a matter that Minerva knew would become a sore point for her as soon as the boy's heritage became evident to Albus. "His name is Harry _Kendrick_. All perfectly legal; just ask your deputy."

Minerva managed to avoid an overt wince. But she'd known that Elyssia would likely be angry with her as well, hadn't she? "I filed the papers with the Ministry myself, Albus. The boy is legally, in both the Muggle and magical realms, Harrison Kendrick."

"The boy should have stayed with his aun-" There was a sharp gesture from Elyssia, a few short syllables in Elvish, and Albus froze where he was, mouth still open and eyes wide behind his glasses.

"Do _not_," Elyssia said in quiet and clipped tones, "make that claim in front of me, Albus Dumbledore. You would not appreciate the ramifications. Minerva, how did Quirrell and our _esteemed_ headmaster come to such knowledge in the first place?"

"Se…us…"

Another flick of Elyssia's hand, and whatever magic had held Albus dissipated. "Severus," he said around a wheezing breath, "merely confirmed a guess of my own."

"Was he, perchance, _in public_ when he did so?"

The color drained from Albus's face. "Oh dear."

"So I assumed. Count yourself _very_ lucky that my son is training as a priest, Headmaster, else worse harm might have come to him."

"Nonsense, it was the protection afforded by his mother's act of love -"

"Are you _still_ on about that old chestnut? Lily sacrificed her life to try and save her son, yes, nothing a thousand other mothers didn't also do during the course of Voldemort's reign. _No one_ knows why he wasn't killed that night, Headmaster, not even you. _Theories_ are all anyone has, and for all we know, the gods might simply wish to toy with his life much as they have mine."

"Let us pray that isn't so," Minerva said under her breath. "You were with us when we found him. And what was left of Quirenius. Gannayev is in the infirmary with him?"

Elyssia nodded. "If you will excuse me, I believe my husband and I need some time to consider the wisdom of my son's continued attendance."

"You cannot do that, madam! _This_ is where James and Lily Potter wished him to attend his classes, and _this_ is where _he shall remain_!"

Minerva had never been more tempted to hex Albus than at that moment. She had _warned_ him, several times over the years that Elyssia had been in contact with Hogwarts or attending, that her niece wouldn't dance to his tune if she didn't want to, no matter how good his intentions. And if she thought that his good intentions were paving a path to hell for any of her loved ones…

Elyssia's eyes narrowed and she let out a disdainful snort, one hand playing with the hilt of the Sword of Gith where it rested against her hip. "A poor attempt at intimidation, Albus Dumbledore. I'm aware of beings half your age, half your _height_ who would provoke fear in a more impressive manner than you." She turned, sauntered toward the door. "You'll have our answer by the end of July. Good day, Headmaster. Professor."


	16. A Bitter Pill

**_Disclaimer:_**_ I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or Neverwinter Nights 2. Those belong to JK Rowling and the geniuses at Wizards of the Coast and Obsidian Entertainment, respectively. Any and all instances of dwarven insults may be found and spliced together at dwarvenconspiracy.__ com/ insult. asp (good for a laugh, or a proper turn of dwarf-taught phrasing - just remove all the spaces)._

* * *

****

Yet, Never, in Extremity

____

A Bitter Pill

* * *

____

"Hope" is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

I've heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of Me.

- Emily Dickinson

* * *

"Give me one good reason as to why I shouldn't hex the piss out of you."

Severus glowered down at Elyssia, swallowing awkwardly around the tip of a birch and phoenix feather wand pressed against his adam's apple. He crossed his arms over his chest and ratcheted the glare up to the expression that tended to put Longbottom one step away from fleeing in terror. The wand just dug in a little further, and Elyssia's free hand settled lightly on what looked like the hilt of a sword. "_Kendrick_, Elyssia? How very…_muggle_."

He could almost hear her teeth grinding as her hand clenched around the hilt. "Do not attempt to change the subject. Your loose lips put my child in danger."

"_Potter's_ child."

"_My _child, you dandified beard-shaving orc-spawn! And even if Gannayev and I hadn't been the ones who raised him, you still put _Lily's son_ in danger and exposed him to both Dumbledore's cockamamie 'blood protection' scheme and a certain bodiless snake. You know, perhaps I shouldn't hex the piss out of you, after all…"

The wand tip removed itself from his throat, and Severus couldn't help a small sigh of relief.

"I should just hex what's left after my husband and my aunt get through with you."

The sigh turned into a wince and cringe that might have mortified him under normal circumstances. But it was a well-known and well-documented fact that the McGonagall witches were strong-willed, built of stern morals, and possessed a vindictive streak that - when properly stoked - could put the worst Weasley pranks to shame. Gannayev Kendrick was an unknown, true, but if the man had been able to survive marriage to the Slytherin alumna for as long as he likely had…

"I swore to protect Lily's son."

"You put him in danger in the first place!"

"Unknowingly, perhaps."

"You didn't notice that Quirrell was eavesdropping?"

"I did not."

"…Severus? How in the Nine Hells did you survive spying on Voldemort?"

He could feel the spike of heat in his cheeks and silently cursed the woman for knowing just what proverbial buttons to push. "It was a regrettable oversight on my part, one that, I assure you, will not happen again."

"Best for you that it doesn't." Some of her ire seemed to have waned, he noticed; the hand clenched around the blade's hilt had relaxed, and the wand was slipped back into a small holster at her waist.

"Elyssia," he said, gentling his voice as best he could, "what happened back then?"

"Severus, don't."

"I think I have a right to know why it is that you vanished after that night." He put a hand on her arm, looking into blue eyes as best he could while she was attempting to avoid his.

She pulled away, her jaw set. "Severus. It was a mistake. A regrettable, alcohol-lubricated mistake."

He caught her hand. "Elyssia, if you would just -"

The door opened, and the man in the doorway narrowed gray-green eyes at Severus's hand on Elyssia's. "Lyssi-love? Is everything all right here?"

She shook Severus's hand from hers and walked to the man, still watching Severus from the corner of her eye when the man lifted her hand - the one Severus had caught, he noticed with a slight spark of irritation - to his lips. The mysterious Gannayev Kendrick, then?

"It's fine, Gann." Suspicion confirmed.

"Good. Harry's asking for you."

Elyssia nodded, exchanged a long look with her husband, and left with a jerky and over-formal nod to Severus.

Gannayev Kendrick strode into the room, and Severus was reminded some form of wild cat stalking its prey. "So," he said, "you're Snape."

* * *

The professor wasn't much to look at, Gann decided. It would be almost unbelievable that Elyssia would have slept with him - beautiful, charming, wonderful Lyssi, who could have any man she wanted with her looks alone - except for the fact that he knew she wouldn't have lied to him about being completely soused when it happened. Not that she could lie to him in the first place, or that he could lie to her - the bond between them was such that one would know, instinctively and without error or doubt, if the other was lying, no matter how good an actor and actress they were.

Snape was shorter than he was, more bone than muscle as well, and it was something Gann used to his advantage as he crossed his arms over his chest and looked down his nose (which, he noted with vengeful pride, was much straighter and, well, _prettier_ than Snape's) at the man. "You're lucky that my son still lives."

"He's a _Potter_," Snape spat with a dark glare, "of course he lives."

"I'd watch my tongue, if I were you. Unlike my wife, I don't have any sort of sentimental attachments to you or this place."

"Bah. And what should I have to fear from a Muggle?"

One hand lashed out to bat away the hand holding the wand, the other, curled into a fist, lashed out into Snape's cheekbone and sent him staggering. "Stay away from my wife, keep yourself civil around my son, or you're going to find out what the inside of a dire bear's digestive system looks like firsthand."

There was a brief tickle of something against his back as he turned to leave - a curse or hex, if he wanted to go by the bemused look on the teacher's face when he looked over his shoulder; it had still fizzled out against his inborn resistance to magic - and he flashed a wicked grin at the man. "No one ever said I was a muggle. Just not a wizard."

The silence behind him was absolutely wonderful.


	17. Homecoming

**_Disclaimer:_**_ I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or Neverwinter Nights 2. Those belong to JK Rowling and the geniuses at Wizards of the Coast and Obsidian Entertainment, respectively._

* * *

****

Yet, Never, in Extremity

__

Homecoming

* * *

__

"Hope" is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

I've heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of Me.

- Emily Dickinson

* * *

Harry had never been so glad as when Madam Pomfrey let him out of the Hospital Wing to go to the Leaving Feast. Maybe he _did_ wish that his parents could have stayed for it - he still wasn't sure why Mother had come in looking like she'd seen a ghost (he could see right through her "happy face," and that was like a sign of what Wayne called "the Apocalypse"), or why Father had favored his right hand for a little while - but he knew they had to go home. Callum was still there, after all, not to mention the miniature mountains of paperwork that Kana was really good at putting together on Mother's desk. No, he'd take what he could get and be glad for it, especially since that was away from the Hospital Wing and all that _white_.

Wayne was waiting for him outside the doors of the Great Hall, and Harry could feel his friend's grin echoed on his face. "All right, Harry?"

"Well met. So what've I missed?"

Wayne laughed. "What've _you_ missed? My friend, to hear it around the school, _I_ should be asking _you_ that." Harry couldn't help fidgeting a little at that, but Wayne shrugged and seemed content to drop it for the moment. "Looks like someone landed a good one on Snape, though; he came down for breakfast today, and his cheek was really bruised and about the size of a squirrel's. You know, when one's got acorns and whatnot stuffed in its mouth?"

And Harry suddenly had the sinking feeling that he knew why Father had been favoring his hand.

* * *

Before Elyssia had come along, Gann-of-Dreams hadn't known the meaning of the phrase "comfortable silence." Noise had been his sword and shield, whether it was sweet and cutting words or off-key humming and whistling when he'd been wandering through the wilds. He hadn't needed to hear himself think for years. But he'd started to be content with quiet after traveling with the half-elf, even if, for a long while, it had just meant sitting quietly by the fires at night and barely listening to the soft murmur of Safiya and Elyssia's voices in the background while he watched them bend their heads over some tome that Safiya had lugged along. The silences, as they'd grown closer, had become more comfortable.

The silence of the past few hours was anything but. Lyssi hadn't said a word to him since they'd said goodbye to Harry at Hogwarts, hadn't even met his eyes, and Gann had the distinct feeling that she'd been avoiding him for the rest of the day after that. That Bevil had stormed up and demanded to know what he'd done was just the icing on the cake, to use a phrase he'd picked up from Lyssi.

It wasn't hard to find her when she didn't appear for dinner - he simply went down to the kitchen and wheedled Dory out of that particular fetch-and-carry duty, along with the location of his wife. It was annoying that she still wasn't making eye contact with him when he brought the food into the War Room - and, really, he should've known that was where she'd hidden - but that would be discussed.

He waited until she was finished with her meal, seconds away from diving back into the distinctly smaller stacks of paper. "I'm not going to apologize for punching him."

There was a sort of keening little groan from the back of Lyssi's throat as she jammed her quill back into the little stand and put the heels of her hands to her eyes. "Gann -"

"He insulted Harry, and I don't know _what_ he was doing to you - since I'm pretty sure it probably wasn't the obvious - but whatever it was, you looked like you were going to run screaming into the night if I hadn't come in when I did. I'm not sorry -"

"I don't need to be treated like some kind of - of _damsel_!"

"I agree! Do you _really_ think I don't notice how irritated you get when we have to attend court functions in Neverwinter? Or how easily you can beat any of the Greycloaks out there in a spar? Hells, woman, you survived being the Spirit-Eater!"

"Then _why_ are you trying to fight my battles _for_ me?"

"I'm not!"

"_Really_. And what do you call leaving Severus with a bruise the size and shape of your fist, pray tell?"

"Putting him in his place! Have I wanted to do that ever since you told me about what happened the night Harry's parents died? Yes, and I admit that it felt _very_ good to actually _do_ it. Did it happen without more recent provocation? _No_. I _told_ you, Elyssia, he insulted me, he insulted Harry, and - as I said, _I_ _do not think that you are some sort of damsel_ - you were ready to chew your own hand off to get away from the man. Call it 'defending my territory' if you have to! Just…_talk_ to me." He reached over, gently taking one of her hands. "Please."

There was a quick knock and the squeak of hinges as the door opened, Callum and Safiya poking their heads cautiously around the heavy wood. "Mom?" their youngest said. "Dad? Is…are you guys okay? We heard yelling…"

Lyssi moved her other hand away from her face - he could see how red her eyes were now, and were those tear tracks down her cheeks? - and turned the hand he held to gently squeeze his before she pulled it away and moved to wrap Callum in a hug. "I'm sorry we worried you, dear heart. Your dad and I just had a disagreement." She pulled back after a minute to let Gann reach out a hand and ruffle Callum's hair a little.

"And you're still worried about Harry, too, right?"

"It's nothing for you to be worried about, kitling," Gann said. "Let's let you get back to your lessons, all right?"

"Okay."

"Go back down to the basement," Safiya said, edging further into the room as Callum ducked out, "I'll be down shortly."

"Yes, Mistress Safiya."

The Red Wizard closed the door behind her and leaned against it, eyes narrowed and sharp. "I don't know what you two were fighting about, and I don't particularly care since I know it'll blow over for you two much like everything else does. Next time you two decide to have a lovers' spat, remember to use your inside voices; we heard you from the basement - not _what_ you were yelling, don't worry. So now," she clapped her hands together and stood straight again, "you two are going to kiss and make up. _Then_ you are going to coax the giant spider out from under the alchemy bench. Do we understand?"

Safiya, Gann thought as he nodded dumbly, could be very scary sometimes.

* * *

The Leaving Feast hadn't been as bad as the Welcoming Feast, all things considered. The House Cup had been announced, and it was a bit of a surprise to Harry that Slytherin had won - last he had actually paid attention to the gem-sanded hourglasses, Gryffindor had been in the lead, though that was before Neville and Hermione had ranted about some kind of "dragon incident" that Weasley, Thomas, and Finnegan had been involved in. Hufflepuff hadn't done too badly in the standings, though - four hundred even was still within a hundred points of Slytherin's score (four hundred seventy-two), still within shouting distance of Ravenclaw's four hundred twenty-six. The entire Slytherin table had broken out in a storm of stamping and cheering - he was fairly sure Draco had been banging his goblet against the table at one point - and he'd taken the chance to turn around and congratulate his acquaintance on the house's win while the rest of the hall had been clapping reluctantly. He'd gotten an elbow to the ribs from Zacharias, but that was probably just part of the fact that no one else had really wanted to see Slytherin win. Zacharias was a bit of a sore loser most of the time, anyway.

The rest of his house practically swarmed him as soon as they got back into the common room, demanding to know what had happened to him. He didn't tell them the _whole_ story - and he would have to do something nice for Wayne, Megan, and Cedric for getting the others not to badger him about the things he'd glossed over - but he said enough to satisfy the rest of the 'Puffs into letting him escape to his bed.

They seemed a bit more protective of him in the quickly-vanishing days between the Feast and the day they had to leave for home; most of his friends stuck nearby almost all the time, even Neville and Hermione when they could, as well as at least one older student at random times through the day. Even Draco had passed by once with a polite question about his health - the looks on Neville and Hermione's faces when that happened were almost enough to send him rolling on the floor laughing. He hadn't, but it had been a very close thing.

He'd almost forgotten that exam marks were supposed to be posted, but they were within days of his return to the general crowd. Hermione, not surprisingly, had the best marks of any of their year, though Megan wasn't too far behind her. He and Wayne had done well, too - they crowed about their grades being caused by the girls pressing them into the study group, which had the added bonus for Wayne of getting Megan to lay off the subject of his "Welshness" for a day or two. Neville had done fairly well as well; his Herbology mark more than made up for his grade in Potions, and Harry had the niggling hunch that his friend could do better in that class if Snape wasn't the teacher.

Eventually the year came to an end, though. His housemates stopped acting like overeager guard dogs in favor of packing, Neville's toad - who constantly tried to hide in new and annoying places - was found and returned to him, notes warning them not to use magic over the summer were handed out, and then they were on the train back to King's Cross. He spent most of the ride listening to what his friends planned to do with their summers, replying with noncommittal hums when Hermione and Megan suggested that they come and visit. He'd have to ask his parents, and that would have to be before Midsummer and Shieldmeet, which were - there was a moment of quick mental calculations - early August. The fourth or fifth, if he was getting the conversions right between Dalereckoning and the Gregorian calendar. Mother would know. Maybe, he couldn't help thinking as the train slowed into the station, after robes were exchanged for "muggle" clothing, maybe Mother and Father would let his friends come to the Keep for the festivals.

The guard at the barrier, when they finally disembarked through the press of the crowd, was only letting them through in twos or threes at a time - probably to avoid muggle notice. He, Wayne, and Neville ended up waiting for the girls, following only a moment later, before they started looking for their families in the crowds.

Harry could see a group of oddly-dressed redheads that had to be the rest of the Weasley family, then he was almost knocked off his feet in his moment of inattention by a near-squealing ball of black and red. "Harry! You're okay!"

He laughed, hugging his little brother and ruffling his hair. "Sorry I worried you guys, Cal. Where's Mother and Father?"

"Back that way. Are these your friends?"

Who happened to be snickering at him. "Guys, this is my little brother, Callum."

"We guessed," Megan said around her giggles. "You look a lot alike."

Harry and Callum blinked slowly, exchanged a look between them, and Harry looked over to Wayne, whose eyebrows were somewhere up at his hairline. "Okay…" He introduced his brother to each of them, and Callum greeted them as politely as was expected of any child of their mother's before he practically yanked Harry's arm out to get him to Mother and Father. Everyone else, Harry noticed, was still following, but whether that was because of their curiosity (he'd shared his suspicions about the bruise on Snape's cheek on the train) or because they couldn't find their own families yet or some combination thereof, he wasn't sure.

He made the introductions to his parents - Father admitted, a little reluctantly, to punching Snape (Callum whispered to Harry that their parents had a big fight after they'd gotten home, probably about that), which instantly made him Neville's hero, and Mother offered to wait for everyone else's parents to find them before his family left - and there was a bit of small talk before his friends started seeing their parents and leaving, promises to write in their wakes. Neville's grandmother was the only one who came over to them; an older woman with a vulture on her hat and a somewhat stern look on her face who exchanged a short greeting with Harry's mother that spoke of long familiarity.

But as interesting as Hogwarts was, as many new friends as he'd made and as much as he'd learned, he'd never been so glad as when he heard his father say the magic words.

"Let's go home."


	18. Diagon Alley Oblivious

**_Disclaimer:_**_ I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or Neverwinter Nights 2. Those belong to JK Rowling and the geniuses at Wizards of the Coast and Obsidian Entertainment, respectively. Snippets of things may be recognizable from _Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets_, and such are either paraphrased or taken near-verbatim from Chapter 4 of _CoS.

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Yet, Never, in Extremity

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Diagon Alley Oblivious

* * *

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"Hope" is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

I've heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of Me.

- Emily Dickinson

* * *

Whoever said that summer was a time for vacationing, Harry thought with a temperament "unbecoming" of one of Tyr's servants, should be covered in paper cuts and dipped in some of Grampa Duncan's cheapest ale.

He knew, from letters, that Hermione and Megan had finished their summer work in the first two weeks of the "holidays," and had, through letters, been nagging the boys of their little group about getting theirs done, too. Which meant that Harry had been up to his eyeballs in parchment. That wasn't counting the hours he'd had to sit in the temple with Ivarr and work on either healing or memorizing the tenets of the Tyrran faith.

So he thought it was pretty well understandable that he hadn't realized what day the trip to Diagon Alley was until Father had, quite literally, thrown him over his shoulder and hopped through the modified Floo connection. He'd had plenty on his mind, of course he hadn't been horribly bothered to keep track of days.

Now if only Hermione, Neville, and Wayne would stop laughing long enough for Harry to explain that.

And, as "Murphy" would have it - and he was going to find this enigmatic Murphy one day and deliver a good helping of Tyrran justice for his/its crimes against Tymora's good fortune - they didn't stop laughing until the small group of shoppers reached Flourish and Blotts. Which, at about noontime, was filled with hordes of starry-eyed females (young and old alike), bored-looking men, and hundreds of chintzy posters proclaiming that the famous Gilderoy Lockhart would be signing books today.

Lockhart, Harry quickly decided after his ears recovered from Hermione's excited squealing, looked like a complete and utter fop - like the nobles who'd stand around looking down their noses at his parents during court but always hid behind the nearest member of the Nine or some piece of architecture during even the simplest of surprise drills. Mother, he recalled, had laughed herself sick the first time Lord Nevalle had one run after he'd taken the Neverwintan throne.

And had Auntie Min just _whimpered_?

Harry exchanged a deeply confused look with Neville and Wayne before turning his sights back to his aunt.

"I should've known," he heard Auntie Min muttering behind the hand that covered her face. "Bloody Gilderoy Lockhart…"

"Minerva McGonagall!" Harry and his friends had to dodge the flurry of robes and flashing teeth that cut through the crowds. "How absolutely _wonderful_ that you came to my simple book-signing!"

Auntie Min responded with a tight-lipped parody of a smile, one Harry didn't think he'd ever seen her use around anyone but his Grampa, and looked down at her wrist as though she were trying to decide if it were worth it to gnaw her hand off to escape.

"Too bad Callum's stuck with Safiya," Harry muttered to his friends. "He would've _paid_ to see this."

They snickered, except for Hermione, who shot a fierce glare back at the boys.

"And it truly is wonderful that Professor McGonagall is here today!" Lockhart practically dragged Auntie Min to the center of the floor by her wrist. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the perfect moment for me to make a little announcement I've been sitting on for quite some time!

"When Minerva McGonagall and her lovely family," he dropped a wink towards Harry's mother, who looked like she was about to either start laughing or start being sick, "stepped into Flourish and Blotts today, they simply wished to buy my autobiography for her nephew - which I shall be happy to present to him now, free of charge, come on up, young man!" The crowd applauded, Harry stumbling forward into the iron grasp of his aunt when Hermione pushed him. "He had _no idea_," Lockhart planted a hand in Harry's hair and scruffed it for a moment, "that he would shortly be getting much, much more than my book, _Magical Me_. He and his schoolmates will, in fact, be getting the real magical me. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have great pleasure and pride in announcing that this September, I will be taking up the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!"

The crowd cheered and clapped and Harry found his arms being loaded down with the entire works of Gilderoy Lockhart even as Auntie Min was propelling him to an empty spot at the edge of the room, muttering in angry Gaelic under her breath as they went. He caught brief snippets of English amid the rant, something about jackdaws and banana slugs, and that firmly cemented the decision that he definitely did not want to know.

"Enjoyed that, Kendrick?" Draco was standing right behind Harry when he turned, right after Auntie Min had forged her way back into the throng. Whatever sting may have been in the blond's words was mitigated, in spades, by the smile on his face.

Harry would've replied, but a blur of red hair materialized in front of him and beat him to it. "You leave him alone! He didn't want that!"

Oh _gods_…

Draco laughed. "Harry, you didn't tell me you had a girlfriend. Although - red hair, freckles, secondhand _everything_ means she's a Weasley - you could've had better taste."

There was a sound rising in the back of Harry's throat, something that was _not_ a whimper, that was quickly stomped down. The stomping took on greater prejudice when he noticed that the girl's ears were as red as her hair.

_Gods_.

"Ginny!" A storm of red swept down on them, pulling the girl - Ginny? - away and jostling him into someone else.

Said someone else, when Harry looked up and behind him, was either Draco's father or a doppelganger with a really weird sense of humor. The second idea was cut off before it could do more than niggle. Lord Malfoy practically reeked of old money, from the aristocratic not-quite-sneer to the expensive robes to the cane topped by a silver snake's head.

"Father," Draco spun Harry round by the shoulder, looking all the while like a puppy eager for its master's approval, "this is Harrison Kendrick."

Harry dipped into a court-formal bow, lips forming the appropriate pleasantries -

And was interrupted by a loud and derisive snort from one of the redheads. "Always knew Hufflepuffs were worthless." Ron Weasley had shouldered his way to the front of what was very obviously his family, lips drawn back in a snarl. "Bowing to a slimy Slytherin _Malfoy_ -"

"Ronald!"

Draco looked ready to commit homicide, and Harry himself wouldn't have minded taking a page from Neville's book - and he could see the other boy's mouse-colored hair in the crowd, near Lady Longbottom's unique hat as it bobbed toward the exit. But Lord Malfoy simply stalked forward, plucking a battered Transfiguration book from Ginny's dented cauldron and thumbing through it. "Secondhand manners as well, I see."

Did something slip into the book? He must be seeing things.

"Really, Arthur," the book dropped back into the cauldron with a thump that sent Ginny scrabbling to keep hold of the thing, "even your pittance should be enough to provide your litter with basic courtesies. Or," Lord Malfoy's smile turned predatory, "do you not make enough for even that? Really, what's the use in being a disgrace to the name of wizard if they don't even pay you for it?"

The man who was obviously Ron's father turned a shade of red that made blood look pale. "We have a very different idea of what disgraces the name of wizard, Malfoy." His fists were clenched, the knuckles turning white, and Harry started backing away slowly as some long-buried memory of life at the Dursleys' began wailing.

"Arthur, Molly! And this must be young Ginevra?"

"Lucius Malfoy, how many years has it been?"

It was either inspiring or frightening, Harry couldn't yet say which. Auntie Min and Mother had breezed in so easily, diffusing some of the tension with only a few words - he wanted to be able to do that.

The entire clan of redheads seemed entranced by Auntie's conversation, easy enough for Mother to gently steer Lord Malfoy out of the shop with a hand on his proffered arm. Draco followed them alongside Harry, and the expression on the blond's face… The best he could equate it to was the time that Aunt Neeshka had gotten Uncle Khelgar in the rear with the point of a training blade.

Everyone else was waiting outside, Wayne's and Hermione's and his own father laden with bags. All of them were gaping at the bubbly airhead his mother had seemingly turned into in the space of two minutes. Well, all of them but Father, but Father was used to it.

"Unfortunately, we simply _must_ be on our way, but _do_ give darling Narcissa my warmest regards!" Mother dipped into something somewhere between a nod and a bow and a curtsey, watched a bewildered-looking Lord Malfoy bow over her hand. "Ta, then, Lucius, Draco!"

And then she had a sharp grip on his shoulder and Father's arm, beckoning for the rest to follow as she strode away with them in tow. "Harry, I don't _ever_ want you alone with that man, not if you're unarmed."

He nodded and made a promise to that effect. It was strange, though; Mother _never_ held that much venom in her voice unless the subject was Luskan or his godfather.

* * *

"Nuh-uh! He _really_ did that?"

Harry nodded, reaching up and gently pushing his brother's head away from the first in the series of DADA books. Also called toilet paper, but that was beside the point. "You know those airhead harpies at court? The ones who swarm all over Father and Lord Nevalle? He's like a male one of them."

Callum winced. "That stinks. Do you think this year'll be better?"

"I hope so." Harry paused, bit at the inside of his cheek. "Mother and Father said they'd pull me out for good if something like that happened again."

"And I bet they wouldn't let me go at all then."

He frowned, brushing his bangs out of his eyes. "You're their son, of course they'd worry."

A frown that dark didn't belong on Callum's face, and Harry didn't expect the fist that impacted with his arm.

"Ow!"

"Don't be stupid, you're their son, too! Don't talk like you're not, or I'll tell Father."

Harry stuck his tongue out. "Tattletale."

"Not," Callum held up a finger and did a passable impression of Father's "lecture face," "if it's for your own good. Hey, why was Auntie teasing you about a girlfriend? Hermione and Megan aren't, are they?"

"No! Ugh, it's because Auntie's never been here for Ball Season."

"You mean you've got girls making gooey eyes at you over there, too?" Callum shuddered when Harry nodded. "I'm sorry."

"At least I didn't have to be here for last year, or for this one."

"You stink, y'know that?"

Harry hit Callum over the head with a pillow, and the conversation just went downhill from there.


	19. Letters from Hogwarts

**__**

Disclaimer:

I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or Neverwinter Nights 2. Those belong to JK Rowling and the geniuses at Wizards of the Coast and Obsidian Entertainment, respectively. Snippets of things may be recognizable from _Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, _and such are either paraphrased or taken near-verbatim from CoS.**

* * *

**

**Yet, Never, in Extremity**

_Letters from Hogwarts_

* * *

_3 September 1992_

_Dear Mother and Father,_

_How are you and Callum and everyone? I'm well. Hogwarts isn't bad so far this year._

_I don't like Professor Lockhart much, though. He's a bit of an idiot, I think. We had our first Defense class today, and all we did was take a quiz on Professor Lockhart (1. What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favorite color? 2. What is Gilderoy Lockhart's secret ambition? And so on. I'm not joking.) and then he pulled people up from their seats to help him re-enact scenes from his books! Neville told me that the Gryffindors got the quiz and a batch of Cornish pixies flying around the room. Professor Lockhart ran like a scared little girl! He didn't even help get Neville down from the chandelier! I don't think we're going to learn much in DADA this year, not unless it's about how much Professor Lockhart likes to hear his own voice. Could you please send some Defense books that don't have his name on them?_

_I'm thinking about trying out for the Quidditch team with Wayne, too. Tryouts are tomorrow. I think I want to try out for Chaser or Seeker, but I'm not completely sure. Wayne wants to try out for Beater, Neville's said he won't even think about trying out for Quidditch (he says he's horrible on a broom, and I heard he broke his wrist during Gryffindor's first flying lesson last year), and Megan and Hermione are too busy drooling over Lockhart. Wish me luck?_

_Love you all,_

_Harry_

* * *

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10 September 1992

Dear Mother and Father,

I made it! I made the Hufflepuff Quidditch team! Okay, so it's the reserve team, but I still made it! I'm the new reserve Seeker! Wayne made it on the reserve team, too, but a Chaser instead of a Beater. Cedric's the Seeker for the main team now.

Thank you for the books (Wayne and most of the other boys in my year say "Thanks!" too), they'll be really helpful this year since Lockhart's books are rubbish. I don't think I need anything from home before I come back for Christmas. Thank you for the offer of sweets, Mother, but Draco tends to offer me a few that he gets from home to be polite and to annoy the Gryffindors. It's kind of funny to watch them turn odd colors at the sight of Draco being halfway nice, and I think Neville agrees with me. Hermione thinks Draco's a bit of a troll, though. The Muggle-normal way of meaning, not Wizarding (she's had more than enough experience with that!) or ours.

Tell Callum and Mistress Safiya and Ivarr I said hi!

Love you all,

Harry

* * *

_31 October 1992_

_Dear Mother and Father,_

_Thank you for sending the peppermint sticks. Everybody loved them. How is everyone at home?_

_I think there's something really-_

Harry frowned down at the sentence he'd started. Looked between a blank sheet of parchment, the barely-started letter home, and the rubbish bin. The shot, after the letter had been crumpled into something like a ball, bounced easily into the bin after caroming off of the rim.

He didn't want to leave Hogwarts because some sixth or seventh year - probably a Gryff or a Slytherin, maybe a vindictive Ravenclaw with too much time to plot - had a really bad sense of humor. Besides, the only one petrified was Filch's mean old cat. He'd tell Mother and Father if it got _serious_.


End file.
